
Class — :,_ _ 

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SECRETS OFUTHE WOODS 




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\WILlflAM J. LONG 



W00Z? ^CZA" SERIES 
BOOK THREE 



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Boston, U.S.A., and London r^ r'S 
GJNN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERSi 
©be 3tbrn*ttm Press %^ \ 
1901 <-^ 



THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Received 

AUG. 12 1901 

COPYRIGHT ENTRY 

QcLASS^XXc No 
O0PY B. 



Entered at Stationers' Hall 



Copyright, 1901 
By WILLIAM J. LONG 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



QQ1I 



TO 

Ch'geegee-lokh-sis, 'Little 
Friend Ch'geegee/ whose 
coming makes the winter glad 



J 



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PREFACE 

' I ^HIS little book is but another chapter in the shy, wild 

■*■ life of the fields and woods, of which "Ways of Wood 
Folk" and "Wilderness Ways" were the beginning. It is 
given gladly in answer to the call for more from those who 
have read the previous volumes, and whose letters are full 
of the spirit of kindness and appreciation. 

Many questions have come of late with these same 
letters ; chief of which is this : How shall one discover 
such things for himself ? how shall we, too, read the 
secrets of the Wood Folk ? 

There is no space here to answer, to describe the long 
training, even if one could explain perfectly what "is more 
or less unconscious. I would only suggest that perhaps the 
real reason why we see so little in the woods is the way 
we go through them — talking, laughing, rustling, smashing 
twigs, disturbing the peace of the solitudes by what must 
seem strange and uncouth noises to the little wild creatures. 
They, on the other hand, slip with noiseless feet through 
their native coverts, shy, silent, listening, more concerned to 
hear than to be heard, loving the silence, hating noise and 
fearing it, as they fear and hate their natural enemies. 

We would not feel comfortable if a big barbarian came 
into our quiet home, broke the door down, whacked his 



vi Preface 

war-club on the furniture, and whooped his battle yell. We 
could hardly be natural under the circumstances. Our true 
dispositions would hide themselves. We might even vacate 
the house bodily. Just so Wood Folk. Only as you copy 
their ways can you expect to share their life and their 
secrets. And it is astonishing how little the shyest of 
them fears you, if you but keep silence and avoid all excite- 
ment, even of feeling ; for they understand your feeling 
quite as much as your action. 

A dog knows when you are afraid of him ; when you are 
hostile ; when friendly. So does a bear. Lose your nerve, 
and the horse you are riding goes to pieces instantly. 
Bubble over with suppressed excitement, and the deer 
yonder, stepping daintily down the bank to your canoe in 
the water grasses, will stamp and snort and bound away 
without ever knowing what startled him. But be quiet, 
friendly, peace-possessed in the same place, and the deer, 
even after discovering you, will draw near and show his 
curiosity in twenty pretty ways 4%e he trots away, look- 
ing back over his shoulder for wur last message. Then 
be generous — show him the fl^feh of a looking-glass, the 
flutter of a bright handkerchief, a tin whistle, or any other 
little kickshaw that the remembrance of a boy's pocket 
may suggest — and the chances are that he will come 
back again, finding curiosity so richly rewarded. 

That is another point to remember : all the Wood Folk 
are more curious about you than you are about them. Sit 



Preface vii 

down quietly in the woods anywhere, and your coming will 
occasion the same stir that a stranger makes in a New 
England hill town. Control your curiosity, and soon their 
curiosity gets beyond control ; they must come to find out 
who you are and what you are doing. Then you have the 
advantage ; for, while their curiosity is being satisfied, they 
forget fear and show you many curious bits of their life 
that you will never discover otherwise. 

As to the source of these sketches, it is the same as that 
of the others — years of quiet observation in the woods and 
fields, and some old notebooks which hold the records of 
summer and winter camps in the great wilderness. 

My kind publishers announced, some time ago, a table of 
contents, which included chapters on jay and fish-hawk, 
panther and musquash, and a certain savage old bull moose 
that once took up his abode too near my camp for comfort. 
My only excuse for their non-appearance is that my little 
book was full before their turn came. They will find their 
place, I trust, in another volume presently. 

Wm. J. Long. 

Stamford, Conn., June, 1901. 



,1 



CONTENTS 

Page 
TOOKHEES THE 'FrAID ONE 3 

A Wilderness Byway . ....... . . . . 23 

Keeonekh the Fisherman .29 

KOSKOMENOS THE OUTCAST 54 

Meeko the Mischief-maker 73 

The Ol' Beech Pa'tridge . . . . . . . 103 

Following the Deer 128 

Summer Woods . . . . . . . . 128 

Still Hunting . . . 139 

Winter Trails . . . . . . . . 154 

Snow Bound .170 



Glossary of Indian Names . . . . . . 185 



SECRETS OF THE WOODS 



OKHBES 

rilft: 




JlTTLE Tookhees the wood mouse, the 
'Fraid One, as Simmo calls him, always 
makes two appearances when you squeak 
to bring him out. First, after much 
peeking, he runs out of his tunnel ; sits up once on 
his hind legs ; rubs his eyes with his paws ; looks up 
for the owl, and behind him for the fox, and straight 
ahead at the tent where the man lives ; then he dives 
back headlong into his tunnel with a rustle of leaves 
and a frightened whistle, as if Kupkawis the little owl 
had seen him. That is to reassure himself. In a 
moment he comes back softly to see what kind of 
crumbs you have given him. 

3 



4 Secrets of the Woods 

No wonder Tookhees is so timid, for there is no 
place in earth or air or water, outside his own little 
doorway under the mossy stone, where he is safe. 
Above him the owls watch by night and the hawks 
by day ; around him not a prowler of the wilderness, 
from Mooween the bear down through a score of 
gradations, to Kagax the bloodthirsty little weasel, 
but will sniff under every old log in the hope of 
finding a wood mouse ; and if he takes a swim, as he 
is fond of doing, not a big trout in the river but 
leaves his eddy to rush at the tiny ripple holding 
bravely across the current. So, with all these enemies 
waiting to catch him the moment he ventures out, 
Tookhees must needs make one or two false starts in 
order to find out where the coast is clear. 

That is why he always dodges back after his first 
appearance; why he gives you two or three swift 
glimpses of himself, now here, now there, before com- 
ing out into the light. He knows his enemies are so 
hungry, so afraid he will get away or that somebody 
else will catch him, that they jump for him the moment 
he shows a whisker. So eager are they for his flesh, 
and so sure, after missing him, that the swoop of 
wings or the snap of red jaws has scared him into 
permanent hiding, that they pass on to other trails. 
And when a prowler, watching from behind a stump, 



Tookhees the ' Fraid One 5 

sees Tookhees flash out of sight and hears his startled 
squeak, he thinks naturally that the keen little eyes 
have seen the tail, which he forgot to curl close 
enough, and so sneaks away as if ashamed of himself. 
Not even the fox, whose patience is without end, has 
learned the wisdom of waiting for Tookhees' second 
appearance. And that is the salvation of the little 
'Fraid One. 

From all these enemies Tookhees has one refuge, 
the little arched nest beyond the pretty doorway under 
the mossy stone. Most of his enemies can dig, to 
be sure, but his tunnel winds about in such a way 
that they never can tell from the looks of his doorway 
where it leads to ; and there are no snakes in the wil- 
derness to follow and find out. Occasionally I have 
seen where Mooween the bear has turned the stone 
over and clawed the earth beneath ; but there is gen- 
erally a tough root in the way, and Mooween con- 
cludes that he is taking too much trouble for so small 
a mouthful, and shuffles off to the log where the 
red ants live. 

On his journeys through the woods Tookhees 
never forgets the dangerous possibilities. His prog- 
ress is a series of jerks, and whisks, and jumps, and 
hidings. He leaves his doorway, after much watch- 
ing, and shoots like a minnow across the moss to an 



6 Secrets of the Woods 

upturned root. There he sits up and listens, rubbing 
his whiskers nervously. Then he glides along the 
root for a couple of feet, drops to the ground and 
disappears. He is hiding there under a dead leaf. 
A moment of stillness and he jumps like a jack-in-a- 
box. Now he is sitting on the leaf that covered him, 
rubbing his whiskers again, looking back over his 
trail as if he heard footsteps behind him. Then 
another nervous dash, a squeak which proclaims at 
once his escape and his arrival, and he vanishes 
under the old moss-grown log where his fellows live, 
a whole colony of them. 

All these things, and many more, I discovered the 
first season that I began to study the wild things that 
lived within sight of my tent. I had been making 
long excursions after bear and beaver, following on 
wild-goose chases after Old Whitehead the eagle and 
Kakagos the wild woods raven that always escaped 
me, only to find that within the warm circle of my 
camp-fire little wild folk were hiding whose lives 
were more unknown and quite as interesting as the 
greater creatures I had been following. 

One day, as I returned quietly to camp, I saw 
Simmo quite lost in watching something near my 
tent. He stood beside a great birch tree, one hand 
resting against the bark that he would claim next 



Tookhees the 'Fraid One 7 

winter for his new canoe ; the other hand still grasped 
his axe, which he had picked up a moment before to 
quicken the tempo of the bean kettle's song. His 
dark face peered behind the tree with a kind of child- 
like intensity written all over it. 

I stole nearer without his hearing me; but I could 
see nothing. The woods were all still. Killooleet 
was dozing by his nest; the chickadees had vanished, 
knowing that it was not meal time ; and Meeko the 
red squirrel had been made to jump from the fir top 
to the ground so often that now he kept sullenly to 
his own hemlock across the island, nursing his sore 
feet and scolding like a fury whenever I approached. 
Still Simmo watched, as if a bear were approach- 
ing his bait, till I whispered, " Quiee, Simmo, what 
is it?" 

" Nodwar k'chee Toquis, I see little 'Fraid One," 
he said, unconsciously dropping into his own dialect, 
which is the softest speech in the world, so soft that 
wild things are not disturbed when they hear it, 
thinking it only a louder sough of the pines or a 
softer tunking of ripples on the rocks. — " O bah cosh, 
see! He wash-um face in yo lil cup." And when I 
tiptoed to his side, there was Tookhees sitting on the 
rim of my drinking cup, in which I had left a new 
leader to soak for the evenings fishing, scrubbing 



8 Secrets of the Woods 

his face diligently, like a boy who is watched from 
behind to see that he slights not his ears or his 
neck. 

Remembering my own boyhood on cold mornings, 
I looked behind him to see if he also were under 
compulsion, but there was no other mouse in sight. 
He would scoop up a double handful of water in his 
paws, rub it rapidly up over nose and eyes, and then 
behind his ears, on the spots that wake you up 
quickest when you are sleepy. Then another scoop 
of water, and another vigorous rub, ending behind his 
ears as before. 

Simmo was full of wonder, for an Indian notices 
few things in the woods beside those that pertain to 
his trapping and hunting; and to see a mouse wash 
his face was as incomprehensible to him as to see me 
read a book. But all wood mice are very cleanly; 
they have none of the strong odors of our house mice. 
Afterwards, while getting acquainted, I saw him wash 
many times in the plate of water that I kept filled 
near his den ; but he never washed more than his 
face and the sensitive spot behind his ears. Some- 
times, however, when I have seen him swimming in 
the lake or river, I have wondered whether he were 
going on a journey, or just bathing for the love of 
it, as he washed his face in my cup. 



Tookhees the ' Fraid One 9 

I left the cup where it was and spread a feast for 
the little guest, cracker crumbs and a bit of candle 
end. In the morning they were gone, the signs of 
several mice telling plainly who had been called in 
from the wilderness byways. That was the introduc- 
tion of man to beast. Soon they came regularly. I 
had only to scatter crumbs and squeak a few times 
like a mouse, when little streaks and flashes would 
appear on the moss or among the faded gold tapes- 
tries of old birch leaves, and the little wild things 
would come to my table, their eyes shining like jet, 
their tiny paws lifted to rub their whiskers or to 
shield themselves from the fear under which they 
lived continually. 

They were not all alike — quite the contrary. One, 
the same who had washed in my cup, was gray and 
old, and wise from much dodging of enemies. His 
left ear was split from a fight, or an owl's claw, 
probably, that just missed him as he dodged under 
a root. He was at once the shyest and boldest of 
the lot. For a day or two he came with marvelous 
stealth, making use of every dead leaf and root tangle 
to hide his approach, and shooting across the open 
spaces so quickly that one knew not what had 
happened — just a dun streak which ended in noth- 
ing. And the brown leaf gave no sign of what it 



io Secrets of the Woods 

sheltered. But once assured of his ground, he came 
boldly. This great man-creature, with his face close 
to the table, perfectly still but for his eyes, with a 
hand that moved gently if it moved at all, was not to 
be feared — that Tookhees felt instinctively. And 
this strange fire with hungry odors, and the white 
tent, and the comings and goings of men who were 
masters of the woods kept fox and lynx and owl far 
away — that he learned after a day or two. Only the 
mink, who crept in at night to steal the man's fish, 
was to be feared. So Tookhees presently gave up 
his nocturnal habits and came out boldly into the 
sunlight. Ordinarily the little creatures come out in 
the dusk, when their quick movements are hidden 
among the shadows that creep and quiver. But with 
fear gone, they are only too glad to run about in 
the daylight, especially when good things to eat are 
callino; them. 

Besides the veteran there was a little mother-mouse, 
whose tiny gray jacket was still big enough to cover 
a wonderful mother love, as I afterwards found out. 
She never ate at my table, but carried her fare away 
into hiding, not to feed her little ones — they were 
too small as yet — but thinking in some dumb way, 
behind the bright little eyes, that they needed her and 
that her life must be spared with greater precaution 



Tookhees the y Fraid One 1 1 

for their sakes. She would steal timidly to my 
table, always appearing from under a gray shred of 
bark on a fallen birch log, following the same path, 
first to a mossy stone, then to a dark hole under a 
root, then to a low brake, and along the underside of 
a billet of wood to the mouse table. There she would 
stuff both cheeks hurriedly, till they bulged as if she 
had toothache, and steal away by the same path, dis- 
appearing at last under the shred of gray bark. 

For a long time it puzzled me to find her nest, 
which I knew could not be far away. It was not in 
the birch log where she disappeared — that was hollow 
the whole length — nor was it anywhere beneath it. 
Some distance away was a large stone, half covered 
by the green moss which reached up from every side. 
The most careful search here had failed to discover 
any trace of Tookhees' doorway; so one day when 
the wind blew half a gale and I was going out on 
the lake alone, I picked up this stone to put in the 
bow of my canoe. That was to steady the little craft 
by bringing her nose down to grip the water. Then 
the secret was out, and there it was in a little dome 
of dried grass among some spruce roots under the 
stone. 

The mother was away foraging, but a faint sibilant 
squeaking within the dome told me that the little 



12 Secrets of the Woods 

ones were there, and hungry as usual. As I watched 
there was a sw T ift movement in a tunnel among the 
roots, and the mother-mouse came rushing back. She 
paused a moment, lifting her forepaws against a root 
to sniff what danger threatened. Then she saw my 
face bending over the opening — Et tu Brute! and 
she darted into the nest. In a moment she was out 
again and disappeared into her tunnel, running 
swiftly with her little ones hanging to her sides by a 
grip that could not be shaken, — all but one, a delicate 
pink creature that one could hide in a thimble, and 
that snuggled down in the darkest corner of my hand 
confidently. 

It was ten minutes before the little mother came 
back, looking anxiously for the lost baby. When she 
found him safe in his own nest, with the man's face 
still watching, she was half reassured ; but when she 
threw herself down and the little one began to drink, 
she grew fearful again and ran away into the tunnel, 
the little one clinging to her side, this time securely. 

I put the stone back and gathered the moss care- 
fully about it. In a few days Mother Mouse was 
again at my table. I stole away to the stone, put my 
ear close to it, and heard with immense satisfaction 
tiny squeaks, which told me that the house was again 
occupied. Then I watched to find the path by which 



Tookhees the 'Fraid One 13 

Mother Mouse came to her own. When her cheeks 
were full, she disappeared under the shred of bark by 
her usual route. That led into the hollow center of 
the birch log, which she followed to the end, where 
she paused a moment, eyes, ears, and nostrils busy ; 
then she jumped to a tangle of roots and dead leaves, 
beneath which was a tunnel that led, deep down 
under the moss, straight to her nest beneath the 
stone. 

Besides these older mice, there were five or six 
smaller ones, all shy save one, who from the first 
showed not the slightest fear but came straight to my 
hand, ate his crumbs, and went up my sleeve, and 
proceeded to make himself a warm nest there by 
nibbling wool from my flannel shirt. 

In strong contrast to this little fellow was another 
who knew too well what fear meant. He belonged 
to another tribe that had not yet grown accustomed 
to man's ways. I learned too late how careful one 
must be in handling the little creatures that live 
continually in the land where fear reigns. 

A little way behind my tent was a great fallen log, 
mouldy and moss-grown, with twin-flowers shaking 
their bells along its length, under which lived a whole 
colony of wood mice. They ate the crumbs that I 
placed by the log ; but they could never be tolled to 



14 Secrets of the Woods 

my table, whether because they had no split-eared old 
veteran to spy out the man's ways, or because my 
own colony drove them away, I could never find out. 
One day I saw Tookhees dive under the big log 
as I approached, and having nothing more important 
to do, I placed one big crumb near his entrance, 
stretched out in the moss, hid my hand in a dead 
brake near the tempting morsel, and squeaked the 
call. In a moment Tookhees' nose and eyes appeared 
in his doorway, his whiskers twitching nervously as 
he smelled the candle grease. But he was suspicious 
of the big object, or perhaps he smelled the man too 
and was afraid, for after much dodging in and out 
he disappeared altogether. 

I was wondering how long his hunger would battle 
with his caution, when I saw the moss near my bait 
stir from beneath. A little waving of the moss 
blossoms, and Tookhees' nose and eyes appeared out 
of the ground for an instant, sniffing in all directions. 
His little scheme was evident enough now; he was 
tunneling for the morsel that he dared not take openly. 
I watched with breathless interest as a faint quiver 
nearer my bait showed where he was pushing his 
works. Then the moss stirred cautiously close 
beside his objective ; a hole opened ; the morsel 
tumbled in, and Tookhees was gone with his prize. 



Tookhees the 'Fraid One 15 

I placed more crumbs from my pocket in the same 
place, and presently three or four mice were nibbling 
them. One sat up close by the dead brake, holding 
a bit of bread in his forepaws like a squirrel. The 
brake stirred suddenly; before he could jump my 
hand closed over him, and slipping the other hand 
beneath him I held him up to my face to watch him 
between my fingers. He made no movement to 
escape, but only trembled violently. His legs seemed 
too weak to support his weight now ; he lay down ; 
his eyes closed. One convulsive twitch and he was 
dead — dead of fright in a hand which had not 
harmed him. 

It was at this colony, whose members were all 
strangers to me, that I learned in a peculiar way of 
the visiting habits of wood mice, and at the same 
time another lesson that I shall not soon forget. For 
several days I had been trying every legitimate way 
in vain to catch a big trout, a monster of his kind, 
that lived in an eddy behind a rock up at the inlet. 
Trout were scarce in that lake, and in summer the big 
fish are always lazy and hard to catch. I was trout 
hungry most of the time, for the fish that I caught 
were small, and few and far between. Several times, 
however, when casting from the shore at the inlet 
for small fish, I had seen swirls in a great eddy near 



1 6 Secrets of the Woods 

the farther shore, which told me plainly of big fish 
beneath ; and one day, when a huge trout rolled half 
his length out of water behind my fly, small fry lost all 
their interest and I promised myself the joy of feeling 
my rod bend and tingle beneath the rush of that big 
trout if it took all summer. 

Flies were no use. I offered him a bookful, every 
variety of shape and color, at dawn and dusk, without 
tempting him. I tried grubs, which bass like, and a 
frog's leg, which no pickerel can resist, and little frogs, 
such as big trout hunt among the lily pads in the 
twilight, — all without pleasing him. And then water- 
beetles, and a red squirrel's tail-tip, which makes the 
best hackle in the world, and kicking grasshoppers, 
and a silver spoon with a wicked " gang " of hooks, 
which I detest and which, I am thankful to remember, 
the trout detested also. They lay there in their big 
cool eddy, lazily taking what food the stream brought 
down to them, giving no heed to frauds of any 
kind. 

Then I caught a red-fin in the stream above, 
hooked it securely, laid it on a big chip, coiled my 
line upon it, and set it floating down stream, the line 
uncoiling gently behind it as it went. When it 
reached the eddy I raised my rod tip ; the line 
straightened ; the red-fin plunged overboard, and a 



Tookhees the 'Fraid One 17 

two-pound trout, thinking, no doubt, that the little 
fellow had been hiding under the chip, rose for him 
and took him in. That was the only one I caught. 
His struggle disturbed the pool, and the other trout 
gave no heed to more red-fins. 

Then, one morning at daybreak, as I sat on a big 
rock pondering new baits and devices, a stir on an 
alder bush across the stream caught my eye. Took- 
hees the wood mouse was there, running over the 
bush, evidently for the black catkins which still clung 
to the tips. As I watched him he fell, or jumped 
from his branch into the quiet water below and, after 
circling about for a moment, headed bravely across 
the current. I could just see his nose as he swam, a 
rippling wedge against the black water with a widen- 
ing letter V trailing out behind him. The current 
swept him downward ; he touched the edge of the 
big eddy ; there was a swirl, a mighty plunge beneath, 
and Tookhees was gone, leaving no trace but a swift 
circle of ripples that were swallowed up in the rings 
and dimples behind the rock. — I had found what bait 
the big trout wanted. 

Hurrying back to camp, I loaded a cartridge lightly 
with a pinch of dust shot, spread some crumbs near 
the big log behind my tent, squeaked the call a few 
times, and sat down to wait. " These mice are 



1 8 Secrets of the Woods 

strangers to me," I told Conscience, who was protest- 
ing a little, " and the woods are full of them, and I 
want that trout." 

In a moment there was a rustle in the mossy door- 
way and Tookhees appeared. He darted across the 
open, seized a crumb in his mouth, sat up on his 
hind legs, took the crumb in his paws, and began to 
eat. I had raised the gun, thinking he would dodge 
back a few times before giving me a shot ; his bold- 
ness surprised me, but I did not recognize him. Still 
my eye followed along the barrels and over the sight 
to where Tookhees sat eating his crumb. My finger 
was pressing the trigger — " O you big butcher," said 
Conscience, " think how little he is, and what a big 
roar your gun will make ! Are n't you ashamed ? " 

" But I want the trout," I protested. 

" Catch him then, without killing this little harm- 
less thing," said Conscience sternly. 

" But he is a stranger to me ; I never " — 

" He is eating your bread and salt," said Conscience. 
That settled it ; but even as I looked at him over the 
gun sight, Tookhees finished his crumb, came to my 
foot, ran along my leg into my lap, and looked into 
my face expectantly. The grizzled coat and the split 
ear showed the welcome guest at my table for a week 
past. He was visiting the stranger colony, as wood 



Tookhees the ' Fraid One 19 

mice are fond of doing, and persuading them by his 
example that they might trust me, as he did. More 
ashamed than if I had been caught potting quail, I 
threw away the hateful shell that had almost slain my 
friend and went back to camp. 

There I made a mouse of a bit of muskrat fur, 
with a piece of my leather shoestring sewed on for a 
tail. It served the purpose perfectly, for within the 
hour I was gloating over the size and beauty of the 
big trout as he stretched his length on the rock 
beside me. But I lost the fraud at the next cast, 
leaving it, with a foot of my leader, in the mouth of a 
second trout that rolled up at it the instant it touched 
his eddy behind the rock. 

After that the wood mice were safe so far as I was 
concerned. Not a trout, though he were big as a 
salmon, would ever taste them, unless they chose to 
go swimming of their own accord ; and I kept their 
table better supplied than before. I saw much of 
their visiting back and forth, and have understood 
better what those tunnels mean that one finds in 
the spring when the last snows are melting. In a 
corner of the woods, where the drifts lay, you will 
often find'a score of tunnels coming in from all direc- 
tions to a central chamber. They speak of Tookhees 1 
sociable nature, of his long visits with his fellows, 



20 Secrets of the Woods 

undisturbed by swoop or snap, when the packed snow 
above has swept the summer fear away and made 
him safe from hawk and owl and fox and wildcat, 
and when no open water tempts him to go swim- 
ming where Skooktum the big trout lies waiting, 
mouse hungry, under his eddy. 

The weeks passed all too quickly, as wilderness 
weeks do, and the sad task of breaking camp lay just 
before us. But one thing troubled me- — the little 
Tookhees, who knew no fear, but tried to make a 
nest in the sleeve of my flannel shirt. His simple 
confidence touched me more than the curious ways 
of all the other mice. Every day he came and took 
his crumbs, not from the common table, but from my 
hand, evidently enjoying its warmth while he ate, 
and always getting the choicest morsels. But I 
knew that he would be the first one caught by the 
owl after I left ; for it is fear only that saves the wild 
things. Occasionally one finds animals of various 
kinds in which the instinct of fear is lacking — a 
frog, a young partridge, a moose calf — and wonders 
what golden age that knew no fear, or what glorious 
vision of Isaiah in which lion and lamb lie down 
together, is here set forth. I have even seen a young 
black duck, whose natural disposition is wild as the 



Tookhees the ' Fraid One 21 

wilderness itself, that had profited nothing by his 
mother's alarms and her constant lessons in hiding, 
but came bobbing up to my canoe among the sedges 
of a wilderness lake, while his brethren crouched 
invisible in their coverts of bending rushes, and 
his mother flapped wildly off, splashing and quack- 
ing and trailing a wing to draw me away from the 
little ones. 

Such an one is generally abandoned by its mother, 
or else is the first to fall in the battle with the strong 
before she gives him up as hopeless. Little Tookhees 
evidently belonged to this class, so before leaving I 
undertook the task of teaching him fear, which had 
evidently been too much for Nature and his own 
mother. I pinched him a few times, hooting like an 
owl as I did so, — a startling process, which sent the 
other mice diving like brown streaks to cover. Then 
I waved a branch over him, like a hawk's wing, at 
the same time flipping him end over end, shaking 
him up terribly. Then again, when he appeared with 
a new light dawning in his eyes, the light of fear, I 
would set a stick to wiggling like a creeping fox 
among the ferns and switch him sharply with a hem- 
lock tip. It was a hard lesson, but he learned it after 
a few days. And before I finished the teaching, not 
a mouse would come to my table, no matter how 



22 Secrets of the Woods 

persuasively I squeaked. They would dart about in 
the twilight as of yore, but the first w T hish of my stick 
sent them all back to cover on the instant. 

That was their stern yet practical preparation for 
the robber horde that would soon be prowling over 
my camping ground. Then a stealthy movement 
among the ferns or the sweep of a shadow among the 
twilight shadows would mean a very different thing 
from wriggling stick and waving hemlock tip. Snap 
and swoop, and teeth and claws, — jump for your 
life and find out afterwards. That is the rule for a 
wise wood mouse. So I said good-by, and left them 
to take care of themselves in the wilderness. 







^E day in the wilderness, as my canoe was 
sweeping down a beautiful stretch of river, 
I noticed a little path leading through the 
water grass, at right angles to the stream's course. 
Swinging my canoe up to it, I found what seemed 
to be a landing place for the wood folk on their river 
journeyings. The sedges, which stood thickly all 
about, were here bent inward, making a shiny green 
channel from the river. 

On the muddy shore were many tracks of mink and 
muskrat and otter. Here a big moose had stood 
drinking; and there a beaver had cut the grass and 
made a little mud pie, in the middle of which was a 
bit of musk scenting the whole neighborhood. It was 

2 3 



24 Secrets of the Woods 

done last night, for the marks of his fore paws still 
showed plainly where he had patted his pie smooth 
ere he went away. 

But the spot was more than a landing place ; a path 
went up the bank into the woods, as faint as the green 
waterway among the sedges. Tall ferns bent over to 
hide it; rank grasses that had been softly brushed 
aside tried their best to look natural ; the alders 
waved their branches thickly, saying: There is no way 
here. But there it was, a path for the wood folk. 
And when I followed it into the shade and silence of 
the woods, the first mossy log that lay across it was 
worn smooth by the passage of many little feet. 

As I came back, Simmo's canoe glided into sight 
and I waved him to shore. The light birch swung up 
beside mine, a deep water-dimple just under the curl 
of its bow, and a musical ripple like the gurgle of 
water by a mossy stone — that was the only sound. 

" What means this path, Simmo ? " 

His keen eyes took in everything at a glance, the 
wavy waterway, the tracks, the faint path to the alders. 
There was a look of surprise in his face that I had 
blundered onto a discovery which he had looked for 
many times in vain, his traps on his back. 

" Das a portash," he said simply. 

" A portage ! But who made a portage here ? " 



A Wilderness Byway 



25 



" Well, Musquash he prob'ly make-um first. Den 
beaver, den h'otter, den everybody in hurry he make-um. 
You see, river make big bend here. Portash go 'cross ; 
save time, jus' same Indian portash." 

That was the first of a dozen such paths that I have 
since found cutting across the bends of wilderness 
rivers, — the wood folk's way of saving time on a jour- 
ney. I left Simmo to go on down the river, while I 
followed the little byway curiously. There is nothing 
more fascinating in the woods than to go on the track 
of the wild things and see what they have been doing. 

But alas ! mine were not the first human feet that had 
taken the journey. Halfway across, at a point where 
the path ran over a little brook, I found a deadfall set 
squarely in the way of unwary feet. It was different 
from any I had ever seen, and was made like this : 







26 Secrets of the Woods 

That tiny stick (trigger, the trappers call it) with its 
end resting in air three inches above the bed log, just 
the right height so that a beaver or an otter would 
naturally put his foot on it in crossing, looks innocent 
enough. But if you look sharply you will see that if 
it were pressed down ever so little it would instantly 
release the bent stick that holds the fall-log, and bring 
the deadly thing down with crushing force across the 
back of any animal beneath. 

Such are the pitfalls that lie athwart the way of 
Keeonekh the otter, when he goes a-courting and 
uses Musquash's portage to shorten his journey. 

At the other end of the portage I waited for 
Simmo to come round the bend, and took him back 
to see the work, denouncing the heartless careless- 
ness of the trapper who had gone away in the 
spring and left an unsprung deadfall as a menace 
to the wild things. At the first glance he pro- 
nounced it an otter trap. Then the fear and 
wonder swept into his face, and the questions 
into mine. 

" Das Noel Waby's trap. Nobody else make-um 
tukpeel stick like dat," he said at last. 

Then I understood. Noel Waby had gone up river 
trapping in the spring, and had never come back; nor 
any word to tell how death met him. 



A Wilderness Byway 27 

I stooped down to examine the trap with greater 
interest. On the underside of the fall-log I found 
some long hairs still clinging in the crevices of the 
rough bark. They belonged to the outer waterproof 
coat with which Keeonekh keeps his fur dry. One 
otter at least had been caught here, and the trap reset. 
But some sense of danger, some old scent of blood or 
subtle warning clung to the spot, and no other crea- 
ture had crossed the bed log, though hundreds must 
have passed that way since the old Indian reset his 
trap, and strode away with the dead otter across his 
shoulders. 

What was it in the air? What sense of fear 
brooded here and whispered in the alder leaves and 
tinkled in the brook ? Simmo grew uneasy and hur- 
ried away. He was like the w r ood folk. But I sat 
down on a great log that the spring floods had driven 
in through the alders to feel the meaning of the place, 
if possible, and to have the vast sweet solitude all to 
myself for a little while. 

A faint stir on my left, and another! Then up 
the path, twisting and gliding, came Keeonekh, the 
first otter that I had ever seen in the wilderness. 
Where the sun flickered in through the alder leaves 
it glinted brightly on the shiny outer hairs of his 
rough coat. As he went his nose worked constantly, 



28 Secrets of the Woods 

going far ahead of his bright little eyes to tell him 
what was in the path. 

I was sitting very still, some distance to one side, 
and he did not see me. Near old Noel's deadfall he 
paused an instant with raised head, in the curious 
snake-like attitude that all the weasels take when 
watching. Then he glided round the end of the 
trap, and disappeared down the portage. 

When he was gone I stole out to examine his 
tracks. Then I noticed for the first time that the old 
path near the deadfall was getting moss-grown ; a faint 
new path began to show among the alders. Some 
warning was there in the trap, and with cunning 
instinct all the wood dwellers turned aside, giving a 
wide berth to what they felt was dangerous but could 
not understand. The new path joined the old again, 
beyond the brook, and followed it straight to the 
river. 

Again I examined the deadfall carefully, but of 
course I found nothing. That is a matter of instinct, 
not of eyes and ears, and it is past finding out. Then 
I went away for good, after driving a ring of stout 
stakes all about the trap to keep heedless little feet 
out of it. But I left it unsprung, just as it was, a 
rude tribute of remembrance to Keeonekh and the 
lost Indian. 



wii 





/HEREVER you find Keeonekh the otter 
you find three other things: wildness, beauty, 
and running water that no winter can freeze. 
There is also good fishing, but that will profit 
you little ; for after Keeonekh has harried a pool it is 
useless to cast your fly or minnow there. The largest 
fish has disappeared — you will find his bones and a 
fin or two on the ice or the nearest bank — and the 
little fish are still in hiding after their fright. 

Conversely, wherever you find the three elements 
mentioned you will also find Keeonekh, if your eyes 
know how to read the signs aright. Even in places 
near the towns, where no otter has been seen for gen- 
erations, they are still to be found leading their shy 
wild life, so familiar with every sight and sound of 



30 Secrets of the Woods 

danger that no eye of the many that pass by ever sees 
them. No animal has been more persistently trapped 
and hunted for the valuable fur that he bears; but 
Keeonekh is hard to catch and quick to learn. When 
a family have all been caught or driven away from a 
favorite stream, another otter speedily finds the spot in 
some of his winter wanderings after better fishing, and, 
knowing well from the signs that others of his race 
have paid the sad penalty for heedlessness, he settles 
down there with greater watchfulness, and enjoys his 
fisherman's luck. 

In the spring he brings a mate to share his rich 
living. Soon a family of young otters go a-fishing in 
the best pools and explore the stream for miles up 
and down. But so shy and wild and quick to hide 
are they that the trout fishermen who follow the river, 
and the ice fishermen who set their tilt-ups in the 
pond below, and the children who gather cowslips in 
the spring have no suspicion that the original pro- 
prietors of the stream are still on the spot, jealously 
watching and resenting every intrusion. 

Occasionally the wood choppers cross an unknown 
trail in the snow, a heavy trail, with long, sliding, 
down-hill plunges which look as if a log had been 
dragged along. But they too go their way, wonder- 
ing a bit at the queer things that live in the woods, 



Keeonekh the Fisherman 31 

but not understanding the plain records that the queer 
things leave behind them. Did they but follow far 
enough they would find the end of the trail in open 
water, and on the ice beyond the signs of Keeonekh's 
fishing. 

I remember one otter family whose den I found, 
when a boy, on a stream between two ponds within 
three miles of the town house. Yet the oldest hunter 
could barely remember the time when the last otter 
had been caught or seen in the county. 

I was sitting very still in the bushes on the bank, 
one day in spring, watching for a wood duck. Wood 
duck lived there, but the cover was so thick that I 
could never surprise them. They always heard me 
coming and were off, giving me only vanishing 
glimpses among the trees, or else quietly hiding until 
I went by. So the only way to see them — a beautiful 
sight they were — was to sit still in hiding, for hours 
if need be, until they came gliding by, all unconscious 
of the watcher. 

As I waited a large animal came swiftly up stream, 
just his head visible, with a long tail trailing behind. 
He was swimming powerfully, steadily, straight as a 
string ; but, as I noted with wonder, he made no ripple 
whatever, sliding through the water as if greased from 
nose to tail. Just above me he dived, and I did not 



32 Secrets of the Woods 

see him again, though I watched up and down stream 
breathlessly for him to reappear. 

I had never seen such an animal before, but I knew 
somehow that it was an otter, and I drew back into 
better hiding with the hope of seeing the rare creature 
again. Presently another otter appeared, coming up 
stream and disappearing in exactly the same way as 
the first. But though I stayed all the afternoon I 
saw nothing more. 

After that I haunted the spot every time I could 
get away, creeping down to the river bank and lying in 
hiding hours long at a stretch ; for I knew now that 
the otters lived there, and they gave me many glimpses 
of a life I had never seen before. 

Soon I found their den. It was in a bank oppo- 
site my hiding place, and the entrance was among the 
roots of a great tree, under water, where no one could 
have possibly found it if the otters had not themselves 
shown the way. In their approach they always dived 
while yet well out in the stream, and so entered their 
door unseen. When they came out they were quite 
as careful, always swimming some distance under 
water before coming to the surface. It was several 
days before my eye could trace surely the faint undu- 
lation of the water above them, and so follow their 
course to their doorway. Had not the water been 



Keeonekh the Fisherman 33 

shallow I should never have found it; for they are the 
most wonderful of swimmers, making no ripple on the 
surface, and not half the disturbance below it that a 
fish of the same weight makes. 

Those were among the happiest watching hours 
that I have ever spent in the woods. The game was 
so large, so utterly unexpected; and I had the won- 
derful discovery all to myself. Not one of the half 
dozen boys and men who occasionally, when the fever 
seized them, trapped muskrat in the big meadow, a 
mile below, or the rare mink that hunted frogs in the 
brook, had any suspicion that such splendid fur was 
to be had for the hunting. 

Sometimes a whole afternoon would go slowly by, 
filled with the sounds and sweet smells of the woods, 
and not a ripple would break the dimples of the stream 
before me. But when, one late afternoon, just as the 
pines across the stream began to darken against the 
western light, a string of silver bubbles shot across 
the stream and a big otter rose to the surface with a 
pickerel in his mouth, all the watching that had not 
well repaid itself was swept out of the reckoning. He 
came swiftly towards me, put his fore paws against the 
bank, gave a wriggling jump, — and there he was, not 
twenty feet away, holding the pickerel down with his 
fore paws, his back arched like a frightened cat, and a 



34 Secrets of the Woods 

tiny stream of water trickling down from the tip of his 
heavy pointed tail, as he ate his fish with immense 
relish. 

Years afterward, hundreds of miles away on the 
Dungarvon, in the heart of the wilderness, every 
detail of the scene came back to me again. I was 
standing on snowshoes, looking out over the frozen 
river, when Keeonekh appeared in an open pool with 
a trout in his mouth. He broke his way, with a clatter- 
ing tinkle of winter bells, through the thin edge of ice, 
put his paws against the heavy snow ice, threw himself 
out with the same wriggling jump, and ate with his 
back arched — just as I had seen him years before. 

This curious way of eating is, I think, characteristic 
of all otters ; certainly of those that I have been for- 
tunate enough to see. Why they do it is more than 
I know; but it must be uncomfortable for every 
mouthful — full of fish bones, too — to slide uphill 
to one's stomach. Perhaps it is mere habit, which 
shows in the arched backs of all the weasel family. 
Perhaps it is to frighten any enemy that may approach 
unawares while Keeonekh is eating, just as an owl, 
when feeding on the ground, bristles up all his feathers 
so as to look as big as possible. 

But my first otter was too keen-scented to remain 
long so near a concealed enemy. Suddenly he stopped 



Keeonekh the Fisherman 35 

eating and turned his head in my direction. I could 
see his nostrils twitching as the wind gave him its 
message. Then he left his fish, glided into the stream 
as noiselessly as the brook entered it below him, and 
disappeared without leaving a single wavelet to show 
where he had gone down. 

When the young otters appeared, there was one of 
the most interesting lessons to be seen in the woods. 
Though Keeonekh loves the water and lives in it 
more than half the time, his little ones are afraid of 
it as so many kittens. If left to themselves they 
would undoubtedly go off for a hunting life, follow- 
ing the old family instinct ; for fishing is an acquired 
habit of the otters, and so the fishing instinct cannot 
yet be transmitted to the little ones. That will take 
many generations. Meanwhile the little Keeonekhs 
must be taught to swim. 

One day the mother-otter appeared on the bank 
among the roots of the great tree under which was 
their secret doorway. That was surprising, for up to 
this time both otters had always approached it from 
the river, and were never seen on the bank near their 
den. She appeared to be digging, but was immensely 
cautious about it, looking, listening, sniffing contin- 
ually. I had never gone near the place for fear of 
frightening them away; and it was months afterward, 



36 Secrets of the Woods 

when the den was deserted, before I examined it to 
understand just what she was doing. Then -I found 
that she had made another doorway from her den lead- 
ing out to the bank. She had selected the spot with 
wonderful cunning, — a hollow under a great root that 
would never be noticed, — and she dug from inside, 
carrying the earth down to the river bottom, so that 
there should be nothing about the tree to indicate the 
haunt of an animal. 

Long afterwards, when I had grown better acquainted 
with Keeonekh's ways from much watching, I under- 
stood the meaning of all this. She was simply 
making a safe w r ay out and in for the little ones, 
who were afraid of the water. Had she taken or 
driven them out of her own entrance under the 
river, they might easily have drowned ere they 
reached the surface. 

When the entrance was all ready she disappeared, 
but I have no doubt she was just inside, watching to 
be sure the coast was clear. Slowly her head and 
neck appeared till they showed clear of the black 
roots. She turned her nose up stream — -nothing in 
the wind. Eyes and ears searched below — nothing 
harmful there. Then she came out, and after her 
toddled two little otters, full of wonder at the big 
bright world, full of fear at the river. 



Keeonekh the Fisherman 2>7 

There was no play at first, only wonder and investi- 
gation. Caution was born in them ; they put their 
little feet down as if treading on eggs, and they sniffed 
every bush before going behind it. And the old 
mother noted their cunning with satisfaction while 
her own nose and ears watched far away. 

The outing was all too short ; some uneasiness was 
in the air down stream. Suddenly she rose from 
where she was lying, and the little ones, as if com- 
manded, tumbled back into the den. In a moment 
she had glided after them, and the bank was deserted. 
It was fully ten minutes before my untrained ears 
caught faint sounds, which were not of the woods, 
coming up stream; and longer than that before two 
men with fish poles appeared, making their slow way 
to the pond above. They passed almost over the den 
and disappeared, all unconscious of beast or man that 
wished them elsewhere, resenting their noisy passage 
through the solitudes. But the otters did not come 
out again, though I watched till nearly dark. 

It was a week before I saw them again, and some 
good teaching had evidently been done in the mean- 
time ; for all fear of the river was gone. They toddled 
out as before, at the same hour in the afternoon, and 
went straight to the bank. There the mother lay 
down, and the little ones, as if enjoying the frolic, 



38 Secrets of the Woods 

clambered up to her back. Whereupon she slid into 
the stream and swam slowly about with the little 
Keeonekhs clinging to her desperately, as if humpty- 
dumpty had been played on them before, and might be 
repeated any moment. 

I understood their air ei anxious expectation a 
moment later, when Mother Otter dived like a flash 
from under them, leaving them to make their own way 
in the water. They began to swim naturally enough, 
but the fear of the new element was still upon them. 
The moment old Mother Otter appeared they made for 
her whimpering, but she dived again and again, or 
moved slowly away, and so kept them swimming. 
After a little they seemed to tire and lose courage. 
Her eyes saw it quicker than mine, and she glided 
between them. Both little ones turned in at the same 
instant and found a resting place on her back. So 
she brought them carefully to land again, and in a 
few moments they were all rolling about in the dry 
leaves like so many puppies. 

I must confess here that, besides the boy's wonder 
in watching the wild things, another interest brought 
me to the river bank and kept me studying Keeonekh's 
ways. Father Otter was a big fellow, — enormous he 
seemed to me, thinking of my mink skins, — and occa- 
sionally, when his rich coat glinted in the sunshine, I 



Keeonekh the Fisherman 39 

was thinking what a famous cap it would make for 
the winter woods, or for coasting on moonshiny nights. 
More often I was thinking what famous things a boy 
could buy for the fourteen dollars, at least, which his 
pelt would bring in the open market. 

The first Saturday after I saw him I prepared a 
board, ten times bigger than a mink-stretcher, and 
tapered one end to a round point, and split it, and made 
a wedge, and smoothed it all down, and hid it away 
— to stretch the big otter's skin upon when I should 
catch him. 

When November came, and fur was prime, I carried 
down a half-bushel basket of heads and stuff from the 
fish market, and piled them up temptingly on the 
bank, above a little water path, in a lonely spot by 
the river. At the lower end of the path, where it 
came out of the water, I set a trap, my biggest one, 
with a famous grip for skunks and woodchucks. But 
the fish rotted away, as did also another basketful in 
another place. Whatever was eaten went to the crows 
and mink. Keeonekh disdained it. 

Then I set the trap in some water (to kill the smell 
of it) on a game path among some swamp alders, at a 
bend of the river where nobody ever came and where 
I had found Keeonekh's tracks. The next night he 
walked into it. But the trap that was sure grip for 



4-0 Secrets of the Woods 

woodchucks was a plaything for Keeonekh's strength. 
He wrenched his foot out of it, leaving me only a 
few glistening hairs — which was all I ever caught 
of him. 

Years afterward, when I found old Noel's trap on 
Keeonekh's portage, I asked Simmo why no bait 
had been used. 

" No good use-um bait," he said, "Keeonekh like-um 
fresh fish, an' catch-um self all he want." And that 
is true. Except in starvation times, when even the 
pools are frozen, or the fish die from one of their 
mysterious epidemics, Keeonekh turns up his nose 
at any bait. If a bit of castor is put in a split stick, 
he will turn aside, like all the fur-bearers, to see what 
this strange smell is. But if you would toll him with 
a bait, you must fasten a fish in the water in such a 
way that it seems alive as the current wiggles it, else 
Keeonekh will never think it worthy of his catching. 

The den in the river bank was never disturbed, and 
the following year another litter was raised there. 
With characteristic cunning — a cunning which grows 
keener and keener in the neighborhood of civilization 
— the mother-otter filled up the land entrance among 
the roots with earth and driftweed, using only the 
doorway under water until it was time for the cubs 
to come out into the world again. 



Keeonekh the Fisherman 



4i 



Of all the creatures of the wilderness Keeonekh is 
the most richly gifted, and his ways, could we but 
search them out, would furnish a most interesting 
chapter. Every journey he takes, whether by land or 
water, is full of unknown traits and tricks ; but unfor- 
tunately no one ever sees him doing things, and most 
of his ways are yet to be found out. You see a head 
holding swiftly across a wilderness lake, or coming to 




meet your canoe on the streams ; then, as you follow 
eagerly, a swirl and he is gone. When he comes up 
again he will watch you so much more keenly than 
you can possibly watch him that you learn little about 
him, except how shy he is. Even the trappers who 
make a business of catching him, and with whom I 
have often talked, know almost nothing of Keeonekh, 
except where to set their traps for him living and how 
to care for his skin when he is dead. 



42 Secrets of the Woods 

Once I saw him fishing in a curious way. It was 
winter, on a wilderness stream flowing into the Dun- 
garvon. There had been a fall of dry snow that still 
lay deep and powdery over all the woods, too light to 
settle or crust. At every step one had to lift a shovel- 
ful of the stuff on the point of his snowshoe ; and I 
was tired out, following some caribou that wandered 
like plover in the rain. 

Just below me was a deep open pool surrounded by 
double fringes of ice. Early in the winter, while the 
stream was higher, the white ice had formed thickly 
on the river wherever the current was not too swift 
for freezing. Then the stream fell, and a shelf of 
new black ice formed at the water's level, eighteen 
inches or more below the first ice, some of which still 
clung to the banks, reaching out in places two or 
three feet and forming dark caverns with the ice 
below. Both shelves dipped towards the water, form- 
ing a gentle incline all about the edges of the open 
places. 

A string of silver bubbles shooting across the black 
pool at my feet roused me out of a drowsy weariness. 
There it was again, a rippling wave across the pool, 
which rose to the surface a moment later in a hundred 
bubbles, tinkling like tiny bells as they broke in the 
keen air. Two or three times I saw it with growing 



Keeonekh the Fisherman 43 

wonder. Then something stirred under the shelf of 
ice across the pool. An otter slid into the water; the 
rippling wave shot across again ; the bubbles broke at 
the surface ; and I knew that he was sitting under the 
white ice below me, not twenty feet away. 

A whole family of otters, three or four of them, 
were fishing there at my feet in utter unconsciousness. 
The discovery took my breath away. Every little 
while the bubbles would shoot across from my side, 
and watching sharply I would see Keeonekh slide out 
upon the lower shelf of ice on the other side and 
crouch there in the gloom, with back humped against 
the ice above him, eating his catch. The fish they 
caught were all small evidently, for after a few minutes 
he would throw himself flat on the ice, slide down the 
incline into the water, making no splash or disturbance 
as he entered, and the string of bubbles would shoot 
across to my side again. 

For a full hour I watched them breathlessly, mar- 
veling at their skill. A small fish is nimble game to 
follow and catch in his own element. But at every 
slide Keeonekh did it. Sometimes the rippling wave 
would shoot all over the pool, and the bubbles break 
in a wild tangle as the fish darted and doubled below, 
with the otter after him. But it always ended the 
same way. Keeonekh would slide out upon the ice 



44 Secrets of the Woods 

shelf, and hump his back, and begin to eat almost 
before the last bubble had tinkled behind him. 

Curiously enough, the rule of the salmon fishermen 
prevailed here in the wilderness : no two rods shall 
whip the same pool at the same time. I would see 
an otter lying ready on the ice, evidently waiting for 
the chase to end. Then, as another otter slid out 
beside him with his fish, in he would go like a flash 
and take his turn. For a while the pool was a lively 
place ; the bubbles had no rest. Then the plunges 
grew fewer and fewer, and the otters all disappeared 
into the ice caverns. 

What became of them I could not make out ; and I 
was too chilled to watch longer. Above and below the 
pool the stream was frozen for a distance ; then there 
was more open water and more fishing. Whether 
they followed along the bank under cover of the ice 
to other pools, or simply slept where they were till 
hungry again, I never found out. Certainly they had 
taken up their abode in an ideal spot, and would not 
leave it willingly. The open pools gave excellent 
fishing, and the upper ice shelf protected them per- 
fectly from all enemies. 

Once, a week later, I left the caribou and came 
back to the spot to watch awhile ; but the place was 
deserted. The black water gurgled and dimpled 



Keeonekh the Fisherman 45 

across the pool, and slipped away silently under the 
lower edge of ice undisturbed by strings of silver 
bubbles. The ice caverns were all dark and silent. 
The mink had stolen the fish heads, and there was 
no trace anywhere to show that it was Keeonekh's 
banquet hall. 

The swimming power of an otter, which was so evi- 
dent there in the winter pool, is one of the most 
remarkable things in nature. All other animals and 
birds, and even the best modeled of modern boats, 
leave more or less wake behind them when moving 
through the water. But Keeonekh leaves no more 
trail than a fish. This is partly because he keeps his 
body well submerged when swimming, partly because 
of the strong, deep, even stroke that drives him for- 
ward. Sometimes I have wondered if the outer hairs 
of his coat — the waterproof covering that keeps his 
fur dry, no matter how long he swims — are not better 
oiled than in other animals, which might account for 
the lack of ripple. I have seen him go down suddenly 
and leave absolutely no break in the surface to show 
where he was. When sliding also, plunging down a 
twenty-foot clay bank, he enters the water with an 
astonishing lack of noise or disturbance of any kind. 

In swimming at the surface he seems to use all four 
feet, like other animals. But below the surface, when 



46 Secrets of the Woods 

chasing fish, he uses only the fore paws. The hind 
legs then stretch straight out behind and are used, 
with the heavy tail, for a great rudder. By this means 
he turns and doubles like a flash, following surely the 
swift dartings of frightened trout, and beating them by 
sheer speed and nimbleness. 

When fishing a pool he always hunts outward from 
the center, driving the fish towards the bank, keeping 
himself within their circlings, and so having the 
immense advantage of the shorter line in heading off 
his game. The fish are seized as they crouch against 
the bank for protection, or try to dart out past him. 
Large fish are frequently caught from behind as they 
lie resting in their spring-holes. So swift and noise- 
less is his approach that they are seized before they 
become aware of danger. 

This swimming power of Keeonekh is all the more 
astonishing when one remembers that he is distinc- 
tively a land animal, with none of the special endow- 
ments of the seal, who is his only rival as a fisherman. 
Nature undoubtedly intended him to get his living, as 
the other members of his large family do, by hunting 
in the woods, and endowed him accordingly. He is a 
strong runner, a good climber, a patient tireless hunter, 
and his nose is keen as a brier. With a little practice 
he could again get his living by hunting, as his 



Keeonekh the Fisherman 47 

ancestors did. If squirrels and rats and rabbits were 
too nimble at first, there are plenty of musquash to be 
caught, and he need not stop at a fawn or a sheep, for 
he is enormously strong, and the grip of his jaws is not 
to be loosened. 

In severe winters, when fish are scarce or his pools 
frozen over, he takes to the woods boldly and shows 
himself a master at hunting craft. But he likes fish, 
and likes the water, and for many generations now 
has been simply a fisherman, with many of the quiet 
lovable traits that belong to fishermen in general. 

That is one thing to give you instant sympathy for 
Keeonekh — he is so different, so far above all other 
members of his tribe. He is very gentle by nature, 
with no trace of the fisher's ferocity or the weasel's 
bloodthirstiness. He tames easily, and makes the most 
docile and affectionate pet of all the wood folk. He 
never kills for the sake of killing, but lives peaceably, 
so far as he can, with all creatures. And he stops 
fishing when he has caught his dinner. He is also 
most cleanly in his habits, with no suggestion what- 
ever of the evil odors that cling to the mink and defile 
the whole neighborhood of a skunk. One cannot help 
wondering whether just going fishing has not wrought 
all this wonder in Keeonekh's disposition. If so, 't is a 
pity that all his tribe do not turn fishermen. 



48 Secrets of the Woods 

His one enemy among the wood folk, so far as 
I have observed, is the beaver. As the latter is 
also a peaceable animal, it is difficult to account 
for the hostility. I have heard or read some- 
where that Keeonekh is fond of young beaver and 
hunts them occasionally to vary his diet of fish ; 
but I have never found any evidence in the wilder- 
ness to show this. Instead, I think it is simply a 
matter of the beaver's dam and pond that causes 
the trouble. 

When the dam is built the beavers often dig a 
channel around either end to carry off the surplus 
water, and so prevent their handiwork being washed 
away in a freshet. Then the beavers guard their 
preserve jealously, driving away the wood folk that 
dare to cross their dam or enter their ponds, espe- 
cially the musquash, who is apt to burrow and cause 
them no end of trouble. But Keeonekh, secure in 
his strength, holds straight through the pond, mind- 
ing his own business and even taking a fish or two 
in the deep places near the dam. He delights also in 
running water, especially in winter when lakes and 
streams are mostly frozen, and in his journeyings 
he makes use of the open channels that guard the 
beavers' work. But the moment the beavers hear a 
splashing there, or note a disturbance in the pond 



Keeonekh the Fisherman 49 

where Keeonekh is chasing fish, down they come 
full of wrath. And there is generally a desperate 
fight before the affair is settled. 

Once, on a little pond, I saw a fierce battle going 
on out in the middle, and paddled hastily to find 
out about it. Two beavers and a big otter were 
locked in a death struggle, diving, plunging, throw- 
ing themselves out of water, and snapping at each 
other's throats. 

As my canoe halted the otter gripped one of his 
antagonists and went under with him. There was 
a terrible commotion below the surface for a few 
moments. When it ended the beaver rolled up dead, 
and Keeonekh shot up under the second beaver to 
repeat the attack. They gripped on the instant, but 
the second beaver, an enormous fellow, refused to go 
under where he would be at a disadvantage. In my 
eagerness I let the canoe drift almost upon them, 
driving them wildly apart before the common danger. 
The otter held on his way up the lake ; the beaver 
turned towards the shore, where I noticed for the 
first time a couple of beaver houses. 

In this case there was no chance for intrusion on 
Keeonekh's part. He had probably been attacked 
when going peaceably about his business through 
the lake. 



50 Secrets of the Woods 

It is barely possible, however, that there was an old 
grievance on the beavers' part, which they sought to 
square when they caught Keeonekh on the lake. 
When beavers build their houses on the lake shore, 
without the necessity for making a dam, they gener- 
ally build a tunnel slanting up from the lake's bed to 
their den or house on the bank. Now Keeonekh 
fishes under the ice in winter more than is generally 
supposed. As he must breathe after every chase he 
must needs know all the air-holes and dens in the 
whole lake. No matter how much he turns and 
doubles in the chase after a trout, he never loses his 
sense of direction, never forgets where the breathing 
places are. When his fish is seized he makes a bee 
line under the ice for the nearest place where he can 
breathe and eat. Sometimes this lands him, out of 
breath, in the beaver's tunnel ; and the beaver must 
sit upstairs in his own house, nursing his wrath, 
while Keeonekh eats fish in his hallway ; for there is 
not room for both at once in the tunnel, and a fight 
there or under the ice is out of the question. As the 
beaver eats only bark — the white inner layer of 
"popple" bark is his chief dainty — he cannot under- 
stand and cannot tolerate this barbarian, who eats 
raw fish and leaves the bones and fins and the smell 
of slime in his doorway. The beaver is exemplary in 



Keeonekh the Fisherman 51 

his neatness, detesting all smells and filth ; and this 
may possibly account for some of his enmity and his 
savage attacks upon Keeonekh when he catches him 
in a good place. 

Not the least interesting of Keeonekh's queer ways 
is his habit of sliding down hill, which makes a bond 
of sympathy and brings him close to the boyhood 
memories of those who know him. 

I remember one pair of otters that I watched for 
the better part of a sunny afternoon sliding down a 
clay bank with endless delight. The slide had been 
made, with much care evidently, on the steep side of 
a little promontory that jutted into the river. It was 
very steep, about twenty feet high, and had been made 
perfectly smooth by much sliding and wetting-down. 
An otter would appear at the top of the bank, throw 
himself forward on his belly and shoot downward like 
a flash, diving deep under water and reappearing some 
distance out from the foot of the slide. And all this 
with marvelous stillness, as if the very woods had ears 
and were listening to betray the shy creatures at their 
fiin. For it was fun, pure and simple, and fun with 
no end of tingle and excitement in it, especially when 
one tried to catch the other and shot into the water at 
his very heels. 



52 Secrets of the Woods 

This slide was in perfect condition, and the otters 
were careful not to roughen it. They never scrambled 
up over it, but went round the point and climbed 
from the other side, or else went up parallel to the 
slide, some distance away, where the ascent was 
easier and where there was no danger of rolling 
stones or sticks upon the coasting ground to spoil 
its smoothness. 

In winter the snow makes better coasting than the 
clay. Moreover it soon grows hard and icy from 
the freezing of the water left by the otter's body, and 
after a few days the slide is as smooth as glass. Then 
coasting is perfect, and every otter, old and young, has 
his favorite slide and spends part of every pleasant 
day enjoying the fun. 

When traveling through the woods in deep snow, 
Keeonekh makes use of his sliding habit to help him 
along, especially on down grades. He runs a little 
way and throws himself forward on his belly, sliding 
through the snow for several feet before he runs 
again. So his progress is a series of slides, much as 
one hurries along in slippery weather. 

I have spoken of the silver bubbles that first drew 
my attention to the fishing otters one day in the 
wilderness. From the few rare opportunities that I 
have had to watch them, I think that the bubbles are 



Keeonekh the Fisherman 53 

seen only after Keeonekh slides swiftly into the stream. 
The air clings to the hairs of his rough outer coat and 
is brushed from them as he passes through the water. 
One who watches him thus, shooting down the long 
slide belly-bump into the black winter pool, with a 
string of silver bubbles breaking and tinkling above 
him, is apt to know the hunter's change of heart from 
the touch of Nature which makes us all kin. There- 
after he eschews trapping — at least you will not find 
his number-three trap at the foot of Keeonekh's slide 
any more, to turn the shy creature's happiness into 
tragedy — and he sends a hearty good-luck after his 
fellow-fisherman, whether he meet him on the wilder- 
ness lakes or in the quiet places on the home streams 
where nobody ever comes. 




nEMot 

IT- 



OSKOMENOS the kingfisher is a kind of 
outcast among the birds. I think they regard 
him as a half reptile, who has not yet climbed high 
enough in the bird scale to deserve recognition ; so 
they let him severely alone. Even the goshawk hes- 
itates before taking a swoop at him, not knowing 
quite whether the gaudy creature is dangerous or 
only uncanny. I saw a great hawk once drop like a 
bolt upon a kingfisher that hung on quivering wings, 
rattling softly, before his hole in the bank. But the 
robber lost his nerve at the instant when he should 
have dropped his claws to strike. He swerved aside 
and shot upward in a great slant to a dead spruce 
top, where he stood watching intently till the dark 

54 



Koskomenos the Outcast 55 

beak of a brooding kingfisher reached out of the 
hole to receive the fish that her mate had brought 
her. Whereupon Koskomenos swept away to his 
watchtower above the minnow pool, and the hawk 
set his wings toward the outlet, where a brood of 
young sheldrakes were taking their first lessons in 
the open water. 

No wonder the birds look askance at Kingfisher. 
His head is ridiculously large ; his feet ridiculously 
small. He is a poem of grace in the air; but he 
creeps like a lizard, or waddles so that a duck would 
be ashamed of him, in the rare moments when he is 
afoot. His mouth is big enough to take in a minnow 
whole; his tongue so small that he has no voice, but 
only a harsh klr-r-r-r-ik-ik-ik, like a watchman's rattle. 
He builds no nest, but rather a den in the bank, in 
which he lives most filthily half the day ; yet the 
other half he is a clean, beautiful creature, with never 
a suggestion of earth, but only of the blue heavens 
above and the color-steeped water below, in his 
bright garments. Water will not wet him, though 
he plunge a dozen times out of sight beneath the 
surface. His clatter is harsh, noisy, diabolical ; yet 
his plunge into the stream, with its flash of color, its 
silver spray, and its tinkle of smitten water, is the 
most musical thing in the wilderness. 



56 Secrets of the Woods 

As a fisherman he has no equal. His fishy, expres- 
sionless eye is yet the keenest that sweeps the water, 
and his swoop puts even the fish-hawk to shame for 
its certainty and its lightning quickness. 

Besides all these contradictions, he is solitary, 
unknown, inapproachable. He has no youth, no play, 
no joy except to eat ; he associates with nobody, not 
even with his own kind ; and when he catches a fish, 
and beats its head against a limb till it is dead, and 
sits with head back-tilted, swallowing his prey, with a 
clattering chuckle deep down in his throat, he affects 
you as a parrot does that swears diabolically under his 
breath as he scratches his head, and that you would 
gladly shy a stone at, if the owner's back were turned 
for a sufficient moment. 

It is this unknown, this uncanny mixture of bird 
and reptile that has made the kingfisher an object of 
superstition among all savage peoples. The legends 
about him are legion ; his crested head is prized by 
savages above all others as a charm or fetish ; and 
even among civilized peoples his dried body may still 
sometimes be seen hanging to a pole, in the hope 
that his bill will point out the quarter from which the 
next wind will blow. 

But Koskomenos has another side, though the 
world as yet has found out little about it. One day 



•' • '" ' ■■.■■:■■:■ ' ■ ' '■■:' 




c 



Koskomenos the Outcast 57 

in the wilderness I cheered him quite involuntarily. 
It was late afternoon ; the fishing was over, and I sat 
in my canoe watching by a grassy point to see what 
would happen next. Across the stream was a clay 
bank, near the top of which a hole as wide as a tea- 
cup showed where a pair of kingfishers had dug their 
long tunnel. " There is nothing for them to stand 
on there; how did they begin that hole? " I wondered 
lazily ; " and how can they ever raise a brood, with an 
open door like that for mink and weasel to enter ? " 
Here were two new problems to add to the many 
unsolved ones which meet you at every turn on the 
woodland byways. 

A movement under the shore stopped my wonder- 
ing, and the long lithe form of a hunting mink shot 
swiftly up stream. Under the hole he stopped, 
raised himself with his fore paws against the bank, 
twisting his head from side to side and sniffing ner- 
vously. " Something good up there," he thought, and 
began to climb. But the bank was sheer and soft ; 
he slipped back half a dozen times without rising two 
feet. Then he w r ent down stream to a point where 
some roots gave him a foothold, and ran lightly up 
till under the dark eaves that threw their shadowy 
roots over the clay bank. There he crept cautiously 
along till his nose found the nest, and slipped down 



58 Secrets of the Woods 

till his fore paws rested on the threshold. A long 
hungry sniff of the rank fishy odor that pours out of 
a kingfisher's den, a keen look all around to be sure 
the old birds were not returning, and he vanished 
like a shadow. 

" There is one brood of kingfishers the less," I 
thought, with my glasses focused on the hole. But 
scarcely was the thought formed, when a fierce 
rumbling clatter sounded in the bank. The mink 
shot out, a streak of red showing plainly across his 
brown face. After him came a kingfisher, clattering 
out a storm of invectives, and aiding his progress by 
vicious jabs at his rear. He had made a miscalcula- 
tion that time ; the old mother bird was at home 
waiting for him, and drove her powerful beak at his 
evil eye the moment it appeared at the inner end of 
the tunnel. That took the longing for young king- 
fisher all out of Cheokhes. He plunged headlong 
down the bank, the bird swooping after him with a 
rattling alarm that brought another kingfisher in a 
twinkling. The mink dived, but it was useless to 
attempt escape in that way; the keen eyes above 
followed his flight perfectly. When he came to the 
surface, twenty feet away, both birds were over him 
and dropped like plummets on his head. So they 
drove him down stream and out of sight. 



Koskomenos the Outcast 59 

Years afterward I solved the second problem 
suggested by the kingfisher's den, when I had the 
good fortune, one day, to watch a pair beginning their 
tunneling. All who have ever watched the bird 
have, no doubt, noticed his wonderful ability to stop 
short in swift flight and hold himself poised in mid- 
air for an indefinite time, while watching the move- 
ments of a minnow beneath. They make use of this 
ability in beginning their nest on a bank so steep as 
to afford no foothold. 

As I watched the pair referred to, first one then 
the other would hover before the point selected, as 
a humming bird balances for a moment at the door 
of a trumpet flower to be sure that no one is watch- 
ing ere he goes in, then drive his beak with rapid 
plunges into the bank, sending down a continuous 
shower of clay to the river below. When tired he 
rested on a watch-stub, while his mate made a batter- 
ing-ram of herself and kept up the work. In a 
remarkably short time they had a foothold and 
proceeded to dig themselves in out of sight. 

Kingfisher's tunnel is so narrow that he cannot 
turn around in it. His straight, strong bill loosens 
the earth ; his tiny feet throw it out behind. I 
would see a shower of dirt, and perchance the tail 
of Koskomenos for a brief instant, then a period of 



60 Secrets of the Woods 

waiting, and another shower. This kept up till the 
tunnel was bored perhaps two feet, when they 
undoubtedly made a sharp turn, as is their custom. 
After that they brought most of the earth out in their 
beaks. While one worked, the other watched or 
fished at the minnow pool, so that there was steady 
progress as long as I observed them. 

For years I had regarded Koskomenos, as the birds 
and the rest of the w T orld regard him, as a noisy, half- 
diabolical creature, between bird and lizard, whom 
one must pass by with suspicion. But that affair 
with the mink changed my feelings a bit. Kosko- 
menos' mate might lay her eggs like a reptile, but she 
could defend them like any bird hero. So I took to 
watching more carefully ; which is the only way to 
get acquainted. 

The first thing I noticed about the birds — an 
observation confirmed later on many waters — was 
that each pair of kingfishers have their own particu- 
lar pools, over which they exercise unquestioned lord- 
ship. There may be a dozen pairs of birds on a 
single stream ; but, so far as I have been able to 
observe, each family has a certain stretch of water on 
which no other kingfishers are allowed to fish. They 
may pass up and down freely, but they never stop at 
the minnow pools ; or, if they are caught watching 



Koskomenos the Outcast 61 

near them, they are promptly driven out by the 
rightful owners. 

The same thing is true on the lake shores. 
Whether there is some secret understanding and 
partition among them, or whether (which is more 
likely) their right consists in discovery or first arrival, 
there is no means of knowing. 

A curious thing, in this connection, is that while a 
kingfisher will allow none of his kind to poach on his 
preserves, he lives at peace with the brood of sheldrakes 
that occupy the same stretch of river. And the shel- 
drake eats a dozen fish to his one. The same thing 
is noticeable among the sheldrakes also, namely, that 
each pair, or rather each mother and her brood, have 
their own piece of lake or river on which no others 
are allowed to fish. The male sheldrakes meanwhile 
are far away, fishing on their own waters. 

I had not half settled this matter of the division of 
trout streams when another observation came, which 
was utterly unexpected. Koskomenos, half reptile 
though he seem, not only recognizes riparian rights, 
but he is also capable of friendship — and that, too, for 
a moody prowler of the wilderness whom no one else 
cares anything about. Here is the proof. 

I was out in my canoe alone looking for a loon's 
nest, one midsummer day, when the fresh trail of a 



62 Secrets of the Woods 

bull caribou drew me to shore. The trail led straight 
from the water to a broad alder belt, beyond which, 
on the hillside, I might find the big brute loafing his 
time away till evening should come, and watch him 
to see what he would do with himself. 

As I turned shoreward a kingfisher sounded his 
rattle and came darting across the mouth of the bay 
where Hukweem the loon had hidden her two eggs. 
I watched him, admiring the rippling sweep of his 
flight, like the run of a cat's-paw breeze across a sleep- 
ing lake, and the clear blue of his crest against the 
deeper blue of summer sky. Under him his reflection 
rippled along, like the rush of a gorgeous fish through 
the glassy water. Opposite my canoe he checked 
himself, poised an instant in mid-air, watching the 
minnows that my paddle had disturbed, and dropped 
bill first — plash/ with a silvery tinkle in the sound, 
as if hidden bells down among the green water 
weeds had been set to ringing by this sprite of the 
air. A shower of spray caught the rainbow for a 
brief instant ; the ripples gathered and began to 
dance over the spot where Koskomenos had gone 
down, when they were scattered rudely again as he 
burst out among them with his fish. He swept back 
to the stub whence he had come, chuckling on the 
way. There he whacked his fish soundly on the 



Koskomenos the Outcast 63 

wood, threw his head back, and through the glass I 
saw the tail of a minnow wriggling slowly down the 
road that has for him no turning. Then I took up 
the caribou trail. 

I had gone nearly through the alders, following 
the course of a little brook and stealing along without 
a sound, when behind me I heard the kingfisher 
coming above the alders, rattling as if possessed, 
klrrr, klrrr, klrrr-ik-ik-ik ! On the instant there was 
a heavy plunge and splash just ahead, and the swift 
rush of some large animal up the hillside. Over me 
poised the kingfisher, looking down first at me, then 
ahead at the unknown beast, till the crashing ceased 
in a faint rustle far away, when he swept back to his 
fishing-stub, clacking and chuckling immoderately. 

I pushed cautiously ahead and came presently to a 
beautiful pool below a rock, where the hillside shelved 
gently towards the alders. From the numerous tracks 
and the look of the place, I knew instantly that I had 
stumbled upon a bear's bathing pool. The water was 
still troubled and muddy; huge tracks, all soppy and 
broken, led up the hillside in big jumps; the moss 
was torn, the underbrush spattered with shining water 
drops. " No room for doubt here," I thought ; " Moo- 
ween was asleep in this pool, and the kingfisher woke 
him up — but why? and did he do it on purpose? " 



64 Secrets of the Woods 

I remembered suddenly a record in an old note- 
book, which reads : " Sugarloaf Lake, 26 July. — Tried 
to stalk a bear this noon. No luck. He was nosing 
alongshore and I had a perfect chance ; but a king- 
fisher scared him." I began to wonder how the 
rattle of a kingfisher, which is one of the commonest 
sounds on wilderness waters, could scare a bear, who 
knows all the sounds of the wilderness perfectly. 
Perhaps Koskomenos has an alarm note and uses it 
for a friend in time of need, as gulls go out of their 
way to alarm a flock of sleeping ducks when danger 
is approaching. 

Here was a new trait, a touch of the human in this 
unknown, clattering suspect of the fishing streams. 
I resolved to watch him with keener interest. 

Somewhere above me, deep in the tangle of the 
summer wilderness, Mooween stood watching his back 
track, eyes, ears, and nose alert to discover what the 
creature was who dared frighten him out of his noon- 
day bath. It would be senseless to attempt to sur- 
prise him now ; besides, I had no weapon of any 
kind. — " To-morrow, about this time, I shall be com- 
ing back ; then look out, Mooween," I thought as I 
marked the place and stole away to my canoe. 

But the next day when I came to the place, creep- 
ing along the upper edge of the alders so as to make 



Koskomenos the Outcast 65 

no noise, the pool was clear and quiet, as if nothing 
but the little trout that hid under the foam bubbles 
had ever disturbed its peace. Koskomenos was 
clattering about the bay below as usual. Spite of my 
precaution he had seen me enter the alders ; but he 
gave me no attention whatever. He went on with 
his fishing as if he knew perfectly that the bear had 
deserted his bathing pool. 

It was nearly a month before I again camped on 
the beautiful lake. Summer was gone. All her 
warmth and more than her fragrant beauty still 
lingered on forest and river; but the drowsiness had 
gone from the atmosphere, and the haze had crept 
into it. Here and there birches and maples flung 
out their gorgeous banners of autumn over the silent 
water. A tingle came into the evening air; the lake's 
breath lay heavy and white in the twilight stillness ; 
birds and beasts became suddenly changed as they 
entered the brief period of sport and of full feeding. 

I was drifting about a reedy bay (the same bay in 
which the almost forgotten kingfisher had cheated 
me out of my bear, after eating a minnow that my 
paddle had routed out for him) shooting frogs for my 
table with a pocket rifle. How different it was here, 
I reflected, from the woods about home. There the 
game was already harried ; the report of a gun set 



66 Secrets of the Woods 

every living creature skulking. Here the crack of 
my little rifle was no more heeded than the plunge 
of a fish-hawk, or the groaning of a burdened elm 
bough. A score of fat woodcock lay unheeding in 
that bit of alder tangle yonder, the ground bored like 
a colander after their night's feeding. Up on the 
burned hillside the partridges said, quit, quit ! when 
I appeared, and jumped to a tree and craned their 
necks to see what I was. The black ducks skulked 
in the reeds. They were full-grown now and strong 
of wing, but the early hiding habit was not yet 
broken up by shooting. They would glide through 
the sedges, and double the bogs, and crouch in a 
tangle till the canoe was almost upon them, when 
with a rush and a frightened Jiark-ark ! they shot 
into the air and away to the river. The mink, chang- 
ing from brown to black, gave up his nest-robbing 
for honest hunting, undismayed by trap or deadfall ; 
and up in the inlet I could see grassy domes rising 
above the bronze and gold of the marsh, where 
Musquash was building thick and high for winter 
cold and spring floods. Truly it was good to be 
here, and to enter for a brief hour into the shy, wild 
but unharried life of the wood folk. 

A big bullfrog showed his head among the lily 
pads, and the little rifle, unmindful of the joys of an 



Koskomenos the Outcast 67 

unharried existence, rose slowly to its place. My 
eye was glancing along the sights when a sudden 
movement in the alders on the shore, above and 
beyond the unconscious head of Chigwooltz the frog, 
spared him for a little season to his lily pads and his 
minnow hunting. At the same moment a kingfisher 
went rattling by to his old perch over the minnow 
pool. The alders swayed again as if struck ; a huge 
bear lumbered out of them to the shore, with a dis- 
gruntled woof ! at some twig that had switched his 
ear too sharply. 

I slid lower in the canoe till only my head and 
shoulders were visible. Mooween went nosing along- 
shore till something — a dead fish or a mussel bed — 
touched his appetite, when he stopped and began feed- 
ing, scarcely two hundred yards away. I reached first 
for my heavy rifle, then for the paddle, and cautiously 
" fanned " the canoe towards shore till an old stump 
on the point covered my approach. Then the little 
bark jumped forward as if alive. But I had scarcely 
started when — klrrrr! klrrr ! ik-ik-ik ! Over my head 
swept Koskomenos with a rush of wings and an alarm 
cry that spoke only of haste and danger. I had a 
glimpse of the bear as he shot into the alders, as if 
thrown by a catapult ; the kingfisher wheeled in a 
great rattling circle about the canoe before he 



68 Secrets of the Woods 

pitched upon the old stump, jerking his tail and 
clattering in great excitement. 

I swung noiselessly out into the lake, where I 
could watch the alders. They were all still for a 
space of ten minutes ; but Mooween was there, I 
knew, sniffing and listening. Then a great snake 
seemed to be wriggling through the bushes, making 
no sound, but showing a wavy line of quivering tops 
as he went. 

Down the shore a little way was a higher point, 
with a fallen tree that commanded a view of half the 
lake. I had stood there a few days before, while 
watching to determine the air paths and lines of 
flight that sheldrakes use in passing up and down 
the lake, — for birds have runways, or rather fly- 
ways, just as foxes do. Mooween evidently knew the 
spot ; the alders showed that he w T as heading straight 
for it, to look out on the lake and see what the 
alarm was about. As yet he had no idea what peril 
had threatened him ; though, like all wild creatures, 
he had obeyed the first clang of a danger note on 
the instant. Not a creature in the woods, from 
Mooween down to Tookhees the wood mouse, but 
has learned from experience that, in matters of this 
kind, it is well to jump to cover first and investigate 
afterwards, 



Koskomenos the Outcast 69 

I paddled swiftly to the point, landed and crept to a 
rock from which I could just see the fallen tree. Moo- 
ween was coming. " My bear this time," I thought, 
as a twig snapped faintly. Then Koskomenos swept 
into the woods, hovering over the brush near the butt 
of the old tree, looking down and rattling — klrrr-ik, 
clear out! klrrr-ik, clear out! There was a heavy 
rush, such as a bear always makes when alarmed ; 
Koskomenos swept back to his perch ; and I sought 
the shore, half inclined to make my next hunting 
more even-chanced by disposing of one meddlesome 
factor. " You wretched, noisy, clattering meddler ! " 
I muttered, the front sight of my rifle resting fair on 
the blue back of Koskomenos, " that is the third time 
you have spoiled my shot, and you won't have another 
chance. — But wait ; who is the meddler here ? " 

Slowly the bent finger relaxed on the trigger. A 
loon went floating by the point, all unconscious of 
danger, with a rippling wake that sent silver reflec- 
tions glinting across the lake's deep blue. Far over- 
head soared an eagle, breeze-borne in wide circles, 
looking down on his own wide domain, unheeding 
the man's intrusion. Nearer, a red squirrel barked 
down his resentment from a giant spruce trunk. 
Down on my left a heavy splash and a wild, free 
tumult of quacking told where the black ducks were 



jo Secrets of the Woods 

coming in, as they had done, undisturbed, for genera- 
tions. Behind me a long roll echoed through the 
woods — some young cock partridge, whom the warm 
sun had beguiled into drumming his spring love-call. 
From the mountain side a cow moose rolled back a 
startling answer. Close at hand, yet seeming miles 
away, a chipmunk was chunking sleepily in the sun- 
shine, while a nest of young wood mice were calling 
their mother in the grass at my feet. And every 
wild sound did but deepen the vast, wondrous silence 
of the wilderness. 

" After all, what place has the roar of a rifle or the 
smell of sulphurous powder in the midst of all this 
blessed peace ? " I asked half sadly. As if in answer, 
the kingfisher dropped with his musical plash, and 
swept back with exultant rattle to his watchtower. — 
" Go on with your clatter and your fishing. ' The 
wilderness and the solitary place shall still be glad ' 
for you and Mooween, and the trout pools would be 
lonely without you. But I wish you knew that your 
life lay a moment ago in the bend of my finger, and 
that some one, besides the bear, appreciates your brave 
warning." 

Then I went back to the point to measure the 
tracks, and to estimate how big the bear was, and 
to console myself with the thought of how I would 



Koskomenos the Outcast 71 

certainly have had him, if something had not interfered 

— which is the e philosophy of all hunters since Esau. 
It was a few days later that the chance came of 

repaying Koskomenos with coals of fire. The lake 
surface was still warm ; no storms nor frosts had 
cooled it. The big trout had risen from the deep 
places, but were not yet quickeried enough to take 
my flies; so, trout hungry, I had gone trolling for 
them with a minnow. I had taken two good fish, 
and was moving slowly by the mouth of the bay, 
Simmo at the paddle, when a suspicious movement 
on the shore attracted my attention. I passed the 
line to Simmo, the better to use my glasses, and was 
scanning the alders sharply, when a cry of wonder 
came from the Indian. " O bah cosh, see ! das 
second time I catch-um, Koskomenos." And there, 
twenty feet above the lake, a young kingfisher — one 
of Koskomenos' frowzy-headed, wild-eyed youngsters 

— was whirling wildly at the end of my line. He 
had seen the minnow trailing a hundred feet astern 
and, with more hunger than discretion, had swooped 
for it promptly. Simmo, feeling the tug but seeing 
nothing behind him, had struck promptly, and the 
hook went home. 

I seized the line and began to pull in gently. The 
young kingfisher came most unwillingly, with a 



72 Secrets of the Woods 

continuous clatter of protest that speedily brought 
Koskomenos and his mate, and two or three of 
the captive's brethren, in a wild, clamoring ring 
about the canoe. They showed no lack of courage, 
but swooped again and again at the line, and even 
at the man who held it. In a moment I had the 
youngster in my hand, and had disengaged the hook. 
He was not hurt at all, but terribly frightened ; so I 
held him a little while, enjoying the excitement of the 
others, whom the captive's alarm rattle kept circling 
wildly about the canoe. It was noteworthy that not 
another bird heeded the cry or came near. Even in 
distress they refused to recognize the outcast. Then, 
as Koskomenos hovered on quivering wings just over 
my head, I tossed the captive close up beside him. 
" There, Koskomenos, take your young chuckle-head, 
and teach him better wisdom. Next time you see 
me stalking a bear, please go on with your fishing." 
But there was no note of gratitude in the noisy 
babel that swept up the bay after the kingfishers. 
When I saw them again, they were sitting on a 
dead branch, five of them in a row, chuckling and 
clattering all at once, unmindful of the minnows that 
played beneath them. I have no doubt that, in their 
own way, they were telling each other all about it. 



AEEKO 




THE 
WAAKER 



HERE is a curious Indian legend 
about Meeko the red squirrel — 
the Mischief-Maker, as the Mili- 
cetes call him — which is also an 
excellent commentary upon his 
character. Simmo told it to me, one day, when we 
had caught Meeko coming out of a woodpecker's 
hole with the last of a brood of fledgelings in his 
mouth, chuckling to himself over his hunting. 

Long ago, in the days when Clote Scarpe ruled 
the animals, Meeko was much larger than he is now, 
large as Mooween the bear. But his temper was so 
fierce, and his disposition so altogether bad that all 
the wood folk were threatened with destruction. 
Meeko killed right and left with the temper of a 
weasel, who kills from pure lust of blood. So Clote 
Scarpe, to save the little woods-people, made Meeko 
smaller — small as he is now. Unfortunately, Clote 

73 



74 Secrets of the Woods 

Scarpe forgot Meeko's disposition ; that remained as 
big and as bad as before. So now Meeko goes about 
the woods with a small body and a big temper, bark- 
ing, scolding, quarreling and, since he cannot destroy 
in his rage as before, setting other animals by the 
ears to destroy each other. 

When you have listened to Meeko's scolding for a 
season, and have seen him going from nest to nest 
after innocent fledgelings ; or creeping into the den 
of his big cousin, the beautiful gray squirrel, to kill 
the young ; or driving away his little cousin, the chip- 
munk, to steal his hoarded nuts ; or watching every 
fight that goes on in the woods, jeering and chuck- 
ling above it, — then you begin to understand the 
Indian legend. 

Spite of his evil ways, however, he is interesting 
and always unexpected. When you have watched the 
red squirrel that lives near your camp all summer, 
and think you know all about him, he does the 
queerest thing, good or bad, to upset all your 
theories and even the Indian legends about him. 

I remember one that greeted me, the first living 
thing in the great woods, as I ran my canoe ashore 
on a wilderness river. Meeko heard me coming. 
His bark sounded loudly, in a big spruce, above the 
dip of the paddles. As we turned shoreward, he ran 



Meeko the Mis chief- Maker 75 

down the tree in which he was, and out on a fallen 
log to meet us. I grasped a branch of the old log to 
steady the canoe and watched him curiously. He had 
never seen a man before; he barked, jeered, scolded, 
jerked his tail, whistled, did everything within his 
power to make me show my teeth and my disposition. 

Suddenly he grew excited — and when Meeko grows 
excited the woods are not big enough to hold him. 
He came nearer and nearer to my canoe till he 
leaped upon the gunwale and sat there chattering, as 
if he were Adjidaumo come back again and I were 
Hiawatha. All the while he had poured out a torrent 
of squirrel talk, but now his note changed ; jeering 
and scolding and curiosity went out of it ; something 
else crept in. I began to feel, somehow, that he was 
trying to make me understand something, and found 
me very stupid about it. 

I began to talk quietly, calling him a rattle-head and 
a disturber of the peace. At the first sound of my 
voice he listened with intense curiosity, then leaped 
to the log, ran the length of it, jumped down and 
began to dig furiously among the moss and dead 
leaves. Every moment or two he would stop, and 
jump to the log to see if I were watching him. 

Presently he ran to my canoe, sprang upon the 
gunwale, jumped back again, and ran along the log 



76 Secrets of the Woods 

as before to where he had been digging. He did it 
again, looking back at me and saying plainly : " Come 
here; come and look." I stepped out of the canoe 
to the old log, whereupon Meeko went off into 
a fit of terrible excitement. — I was bigger than he 
expected ; I had only two legs ; kut-e-k 'chuck, hut-e- 
ft chuck ! whit, whit, whit, kut-e-k' chuck ! 

I stood where I was until he got over his excite- 
ment. Then he came towards me, and led me along 
the log, with much chuckling and jabbering, to the 
hole in the leaves where he had been digging. When 
I bent over it he sprang to a spruce trunk, on a level 
with my head, fairly bursting with excitement, but 
watching me with intensest interest. In the hole I 
found a small lizard, one of the rare kind that lives 
under logs and loves the dusk. He had been bitten 
through the back and disabled. He could still use 
legs, tail and head feebly, but could not run away. 
When I picked him up and held him in my hand, 
Meeko came closer with loud-voiced curiosity, long- 
ing to leap to my hand and claim his own, but held 
back by fear. — "What is it? He's mine; I found 
him. What is it?" he barked, jumping about as if 
bewitched. Two curiosities, the lizard and the man, 
were almost too much for him. I never saw a squirrel 
more excited. He had evidently found the lizard by 



Meeko the Mischief-Maker 77 

accident, bit him to keep him still, and then, aston- 
ished by the rare find, hid him away where he could 
dig him out and watch him at leisure. 

I put the lizard back into the hole and covered 
him with leaves ; then went to unloading my canoe. 
Meeko watched me closely. And the moment I was 
gone he dug away the leaves, took his treasure out, 
watched it with wide bright eyes, bit it once more 
to keep it still, and covered it up again carefully. 
Then he came chuckling along to where I was 
putting up my tent. 

In a week he owned the camp, coming and going 
at his own will, stealing my provisions when I forgot 
to feed him, and scolding me roundly at every irregu- 
lar occurrence. He was an early riser and insisted 
on my conforming to the custom. Every morning 
he would leap at daylight from a fir tip to my ridge- 
pole, run it along to the front and sit there, barking 
and whistling, until I put my head out of my door, 
or until Simmo came along with his axe. Of Simmo 
and his axe Meeko had a mortal dread, which I could 
not understand till one day when I paddled silently 
back to camp and, instead of coming up the path, sat 
idly in my canoe watching the Indian, who had broken 
his one pipe and now sat making another out of a 
chunk of black alder and a length of nanny bush. 



78 Secrets of the Woods 

Simmo was as interesting to watch, in his way, as 
any of the wood folk. 

Presently Meeko came down, chattering his curios- 
ity at seeing the Indian so still and so occupied. A 
red squirrel is always unhappy unless he knows all 
about everything. He watched from the nearest 
tree for a while, but could not make up his mind 
what was doing. Then he came down on the 
ground and advanced a foot at a time, jumping up 
continually but coming down in the same spot, bark- 
ing to make 'Simmo turn his head and show his 
hand. Simmo watched out of the corner of his 
eye until Meeko was near a solitary tree which 
stood in the middle of the camp ground, when he 
jumped up suddenly and rushed at the squirrel, who 
sprang to the tree and ran to a branch out of reach, 
snickering and jeering. 

Simmo took his axe deliberately and swung it 
mightily at the foot of the tree, as if to chop it down ; 
only he hit the trunk with the head, not the blade of 
his weapon. At the first blow, which made his toes 
tingle, Meeko stopped jeering and ran higher. Simmo 
swung again and Meeko went up another notch. So 
it went on, Simmo looking up intently to see the 
effect and Meeko running higher after each blow, 
until the tiptop was reached. Then Simmo gave a 



Meeko the Mis chief -Maker 79 

mighty whack ; the squirrel leaped far out and came 
to the ground, sixty feet below; picked himself up, 
none the worse for his leap, and rushed scolding 
away to his nest. Then Simmo said umpfh ! like a 
bear, and went back to his pipe-making. He had 
not smiled nor relaxed the intent expression of his 
face during the whole little comedy. 

I found out afterwards that making Meeko jump 
from a tree top is one of the few diversions of Indian 
children. I tried it myself many times with many 
squirrels, and found to my astonishment that a jump 
from any height, however great, is no concern to a 
squirrel, red or gray. They have a way of flattening 
the body and bushy tail against the air, which breaks 
their fall. Their bodies, and especially their bushy 
tails, have a curious tremulous motion, like the quiver 
of wings, as they come down. The flying squirrel's 
sailing down from a tree top to another tree, fifty feet 
away, is but an exaggeration, due to the membrane 
connecting the fore and hind legs, of what all squir- 
rels practice continually. I have seen a red squirrel 
land lightly after jumping from an enormous height, 
and run away as if nothing unusual had happened. 
But though I have watched them often, I have never 
seen a squirrel do this except when compelled to do 
so. When chased by a weasel or a marten, or when the 



80 Secrets of the Woods 

axe beats against the trunk below — either because 
the vibration hurts their feet, or else they fear the 
tree is being cut down — they use the strange gift 
to save their lives. But I fancy it is a breathless 
experience, and they never try it for fun, though 
I have seen them do all sorts of risky stumps in 
leaping from branch to branch. 

It is a curious fact that, though a squirrel leaps 
from a great height without hesitation, it is practi- 
cally impossible to make him take a jump of a few 
feet to the ground. Probably the upward rush of 
air, caused by falling a long distance, is necessary to 
flatten the body enough to make him land lightly. 

It would be interesting to know whether the rac- 
coon also, a large, heavy animal, has the same way 
of breaking his fall when he jumps from a height. 
One bright moonlight night, when I ran ahead of 
the dogs, I saw a big coon leap from a tree to the 
ground, a distance of some thirty or forty feet. The 
dogs had treed him in an evergreen, and he left them 
howling below while he stole silently from branch to 
branch until a good distance away, when to save time 
he leaped to the ground. He struck with a heavy 
thump, but ran on uninjured as swiftly as before, and 
gave the dogs a long run before they treed him again. 



Meeko the Mis chief -Maker 81 

The sole of a coon's foot is padded thick with fat 
and gristle, so that it must feel like landing on 
springs when he jumps; but I suspect that he also 
knows the squirrel trick of flattening his body and 
tail against the air so as to fall lightly. 

The chipmunk seems to be the only one of the 
squirrel family in whom this gift is wanting. Possi- 
bly he has it also, if the need ever comes. I fancy, 
however, that he would fare badly if compelled to 
jump from a spruce top, for his body is heavy and 
his tail small from long living on the ground ; all 
of which seems to indicate that the tree-squirrels 
bushy tail is given him, not for ornament, but to aid 
his passage from branch to branch, and to break his 
fall when he comes down from a height. 

By way of contrast with Meeko, you may try a 
curious trick on the chipmunk. It is not easy to get 
him into a tree ; he prefers a log or an old wall when 
frightened ; and he is seldom more than two or three 
jumps from his den. But watch him as he goes from 
his garner to the grove where the acorns are, or to 
the field where his winter corn is ripening. Put 
yourself near his path (he always follows the same 
one to and fro) where there is no refuge close at 
hand. Then, as he comes along, rush at him sud- 
denly and he will take to the nearest tree in his 



82 Secrets of the Woods 

alarm. When he recovers from his fright — which 
is soon over; for he is the most trustful of squirrels 
and looks down at you with interest, never question- 
ing your motives — take a stick and begin to tap the 
tree softly. The more slow and rhythmical your tattoo 
the sooner he is charmed. Presently he comes down 
closer and closer, his eyes filled with strange wonder. 
More than once I have had a chipmunk come to my 
hand and rest upon it, looking everywhere for the queer 
sound that brought him down, forgetting fright and 
cornfield and coming winter in his bright curiosity. 



"V?- 










1<vZJ . M m -rv*vt 2LM \£fi WW-.tfljiZk 



& 



Meeko is a bird of another color. He never trusts 
you nor anybody else fully, and his curiosity is gener- 
ally of the vulgar, selfish kind. When the autumn 
woods are busy places, and wings flutter and little 
feet go pattering everywhere after winter supplies, 
he also begins garnering, remembering the hungry 
days of last winter. But he is always more curious 
to see what others are doing than to fill his own bins. 
He seldom trusts to one storehouse — he is too suspi- 
cious for that — but hides his things in twenty different 



Meeko the Mischief- Maker 83 

places ; some shagbarks in the old wall, a handful 
of acorns in a hollow tree, an ear of corn under the 
eaves of the old barn, a pint of chestnuts scattered 
about in the trees, some in crevices in the bark, some 
in a pine crotch covered carefully with needles, and 
one or two stuck firmly into the splinters of every 
broken branch that is not too conspicuous. But he 
never gathers much at a time. The moment he sees 
anybody else gathering he forgets his own work and 
goes spying to see where others are hiding their 
store. The little chipmunk, who knows his thiev- 
ing and his devices, always makes one turn, at least, 
in the tunnel to his den too small for Meeko 
to follow. 

He sees a blue jay flitting through the woods, and 
knows by his unusual silence that he is hiding things. 
Meeko follows after him, stopping all his jabber and 
stealing from tree to tree, watching patiently, for 
hours if need be, until he knows that Deedeeaskh is 
gathering corn from a certain field. Then he watches 
the line of flight, like a bee hunter, and sees Deedee- 
askh disappear twice by an oak on the wood's edge, 
a hundred yards away. Meeko rushes away at a 
headlong pace and hides himself in the oak. There 
he traces the jay's line of flight a little farther into 
the woods; sees the unconscious thief disappear by 



84 Secrets of the Woods 

an old pine. Meeko hides in the pine, and so traces 
the jay straight to one of his storehouses. 

Sometimes Meeko is so elated over the discovery 
that, with all the fields laden with food, he cannot 
wait for winter. When the jay goes away Meeko 
falls to eating or to carrying away his store. More 
often he marks the spot and goes away silently. 
When he is hungry he will carry off Deedeeaskh's 
corn before touching his own. 

Once I saw the tables turned in a most interesting 
fashion. Deedeeaskh is as big a thief in his way as 
is Meeko, and also as vile a nest-robber. The red 
squirrel had found a'hoard of chestnuts — small fruit, 
but sweet and good — and was hiding it away. Part 
of it he stored in a hollow under the stub of a broken 
branch, twenty feet from the ground, so near the 
source of supply that no one would ever think of 
looking for it there. I was hidden away in a thicket 
when I discovered him at his work quite by accident. 
He seldom came twice to the same spot, but went 
off to his other storehouses in succession. After an 
unusually long absence, when I was expecting him 
every moment, a blue jay came stealing into the tree, 
spying and sneaking about, as if a nest of fresh 
thrush's eggs were somewhere near. He smelled a 
mouse evidently, for after a moment's spying he hid 



Meeko the Mischief-Maker 85 

himself away in the tree top, close up against the 
trunk. Presently Meeko came back, with his face 
bulging as if he had toothache, uncovered his store, 
emptied in the half dozen chestnuts from his cheek 
pockets and covered them all up again. 

The moment he was gone the blue jay went 
straight to the spot, seized a mouthful of nuts and 
flew swiftly away. He made three trips before the 
squirrel came back. Meeko in his hurry never 
noticed the loss, but emptied his pockets and was 
off to the chestnut tree again. When he returned, 
the jay in his eagerness had disturbed the leaves 
which covered the hidden store. Meeko noticed it 
and was all suspicion in an instant. He whipped off 
the covering and stood staring down intently into the 
garner, evidently trying to compute the number he 
had brought and the number that were there. Then 
a terrible scolding began, a scolding that was broken 
short off when a distant screaming of jays came 
floating through the woods. Meeko covered his 
store hurriedly, ran along a limb and leaped to 
the next tree, where he hid in a knot hole, just his 
eyes visible, watching his garner keenly out of the 
darkness. 

Meeko has no patience. Three or four times he 
showed himself nervously. Fortunately for me, the 



86 Secrets of the Woods 

jay had found some excitement to keep his rattle- 
brain busy for a moment. A flash of blue, and he 
came stealing back, just as Meeko had settled him- 
self for more watching. After much peeking and 
listening the jay flew down to the storehouse, and 
Meeko, unable to contain himself a moment longer 
at sight of the thief, jumped out of his hiding and 
came rushing along the limb, hurling threats and 
vituperation ahead of him. The jay fluttered off, 
screaming derision. Meeko followed, hurling more 
abuse, but soon gave up the chase and came back 
to his chestnuts. It was curious to watch him there, 
sitting motionless and intent, his nose close down to 
his treasure, trying to compute his loss. Then he 
stuffed his cheeks full and began carrying his hoard 
off to another hiding place. 

The autumn woods are full of such little comedies. 
Jays, crows, and squirrels are all hiding away winter's 
supplies, and no matter how great the abundance, 
not one of them can resist the temptation to steal 
or to break into another's garner. 

Meeko is a poor provider ; he would much rather 
live on buds and bark and apple seeds and fir cones, 
and what he can steal from others in the winter, than 
bother himself with laying up supplies of his own. 
When the spring comes he goes a-hunting, and is for 



Meeko the Mischief-Maker 87 

a season the most villainous of nest-robbers. Every 
bird in the woods then hates him, takes a jab at him, 
and cries thief, thief ! wherever he goes. 

On a trout brook once I had a curious sense of 
comradeship with Meeko. It was in the early spring, 
when all the wild things make holiday, and man goes 
a-fishing. Near the brook a red squirrel had tapped 
a maple tree with his teeth and was tasting the sweet 
sap as it came up scantily. Seeing him and remem- 
bering my own boyhood, I cut a little hollow into the 
bark of a black birch tree and, when it brimmed full, 
drank the sap with immense satisfaction. Meeko 
stopped his own drinking to watch, then to scold and 
denounce me roundly. 

While my cup was filling again I went down to 
the brook and took a wary old trout from his den 
under the end of a log, where the foam bubbles were 
dancing merrily. When I went back, thirsting for 
another sweet draught from the same spring, Meeko 
had emptied it to the last drop and had his nose 
down in the bottom of my cup, catching the sap as 
it welled up with an abundance that must have sur- 
prised him. When I went away quietly he followed 
me through the wood to the pool at the edge of the 
meadow, to see what I would do next. 



88 Secrets of the Woods 






Wherever you go in the wilderness you find Meeko 
ahead of you, and all the best camping grounds pre- 
empted by him. Even on the islands he seems to 
own the prettiest spots, and disputes mightily your 
right to stay there ; though he is generally glad 
enough of your company to share his loneliness, 
and shows it plainly. 

Once I found one living all by himself on an island 
in the middle of a wilderness lake, with no company 
whatever except a family of mink, who are his enemies. 
He had probably crossed on the ice in the late spring, 
and while he was busy here and there with his explo- 
rations the ice broke up, cutting off his retreat to the 
mainland, which was too far away for his swimming. 
So he was a prisoner for the long summer, and 
welcomed me gladly to share his exile. He was the 
only red squirrel I ever met that never scolded me 
roundly at least once a day. His loneliness had 
made him quite tame. Most of the time he lived 
within sight of my tent door. Not even Simmo's 
axe, though it made him jump twice from the top of 
a spruce, could keep him long away. He had twenty 



Meeko the Mischief-Maker 89 

ways of getting up an excitement, and whenever he 
barked out in the woods I knew that it was simply to 
call me to see his discovery, — a new nest, a loon that 
swam up close, a thieving muskrat, a hawk that rested 
on a dead stub, the mink family eating my fish heads, 

— and when I stole out to see what it was, he would 
run ahead, barking and chuckling at having some one 
to share his interests w r ith him. 

In such places squirrels use the ice for occasional 
journeys to the mainland. Sometimes also, when the 
waters are calm, they swim over. Hunters have told 
me that when the breeze is fair they make use of a 
floating bit of wood, sitting up straight with tail 
curled over their backs, making a sail of their bodies 

— just as an Indian, with no knowledge of sailing 
whatever, puts a spruce bush in a bow of his canoe 
and lets the wind do his work for him. 

That would be the sight of a lifetime, to see 
Meeko sailing his boat ; but I have no doubt what- 
ever that it is true. The only red squirrel that I 
ever saw in the water fell in by accident. He swam 
rapidly to a floating board, shook himself, sat up with 
his tail raised along his back, and began to dry him- 
self. After a little he saw that the slight breeze was 
setting him farther from shore. He began to chatter 
excitedly, and changed his position two or three times, 



9 o 



Secrets of the Woods 



evidently trying to catch the wind right. Finding 
that it was of no use, he plunged in again and swam 
easily to land. 

That he lives and thrives in the wilderness, spite 
of enemies and hunger and winter cold, is a tribute 
to his wits. He never hibernates, except in severe 
storms, when for a few days he lies close in his den. 
Hawks and owls and weasels and martens hunt him 
continually ; yet he more than holds his own in the 
big woods, which would lose some of their charm if 
their vast silences were not sometimes broken by his 
petty scoldings. 





As with most wild creatures, the squirrels that live 
in touch with civilization are much keener witted than 
their wilderness brethren. The most interesting one 
I ever knew lived in the trees just outside my dormi- 
tory window, in a New England college town. He 
was the patriarch of a large family, and the greatest 
thief and rascal among them. I speak of the family, 



Meeko the Mischief- Maker 91 

but, so far as I could see, there was very little family 
life. Each one shifted for himself the moment he 
was big enough, and stole from all the others indis- 
criminately. 

It was while watching these squirrels that I dis- 
covered first that they have regular paths among the 
trees, as well defined as our own highways. Not only 
has each squirrel his own private paths and ways, 
but all the squirrels follow certain courses along the 
branches in going from one tree to another. Even 
the strange squirrels, which ventured at times into 
the grove, followed these highways as if they had 
been used to them all their lives. 

On a recent visit to the old dormitory I watched 
the squirrels for a while, and found that they used 
exactly the same paths, — up the trunk of a big oak 
to a certain boss, along a branch to a certain crook, a 
jump to a linden twig and so on, making use of one of 
the highways that I had watched them following ten 
years before. Yet this course was not the shortest 
between tw r o points, and there were a hundred other 
branches that they might have used. 

I had the good fortune one morning to see Meeko, 
the patriarch, make a new path for himself that none 
of the others ever followed so long as I was in the 
dormitory. He had a home den over a hallway, and 



92 Secrets of the Woods 

a hiding place for acorns in a hollow linden. Between 
the two was a driveway; but though the branches 
arched over it from either side, the jump was too great 
for him to take. A hundred times I saw him run out 
on the farthest oak twig and look across longingly at 
the maple that swayed on the other side. It was 
perhaps three feet away, with no branches beneath to 
seize and break his fall in case he missed his spring, — 
altogether too much for a red squirrel to attempt. He 
would rush out as if determined to try it, time after 
time, but always his courage failed him ; he had to 
go down the oak trunk and cross the driveway on the 
ground, where numberless straying dogs were always 
ready to chase him. 

One morning I saw him run twice in succession at 
the jump, only to turn back. But the air was keen 
and bracing, and he felt its inspiration. He drew 
farther back, then came rushing along the oak branch 
and, before he had time to be afraid, hurled himself 
across the chasm. He landed fairly on the maple 
twig, with several inches to spare, and hung there with 
claws and teeth, swaying up and down gloriously. 
Then, chattering his delight at himself, he ran down 
the maple, back across the driveway, and tried the 
jump three times in succession to be sure he could 
do it. 



Meeko the Mis chief -Maker 93 

After that he sprang across frequently. But I 
noticed that whenever the branches were wet with 
rain or sleet he never attempted it ; and he never tried 
the return jump, which was uphill, and which he 
seemed to know by instinct was too much to attempt. 

When I began feeding him, in the cold winter days, 
he showed me many curious bits of his life. First I 
put some nuts near the top of an old well, among the 
stones of which he used to hide things in the autumn. 
Long after he had eaten all his store he used to come 
and search the crannies among the stones to see if 
perchance he had overlooked any trifles. When he 
found a handful of shagbarks, one morning, in a hole 
only a foot below the surface, his astonishment knew 
no bounds. His first thought was that he had for- 
gotten them all these hungry days, and he promptly 
ate the biggest of the store within sight, a thing I 
never saw a squirrel do before. His second thought 
— I could see it in his changed attitude, his sudden 
creepings and hidings — was that some other squirrel 
had hidden them there since his last visit. Where- 
upon he carried them all off and hid them in a broken 
linden branch. 

Then I tossed him peanuts, throwing them first far 
away, then nearer and nearer till he would come to 
my window-sill. And when I woke one morning he 



94 Secrets of the Woods 

was sitting there looking in at the window, waiting for 
me to get up and bring his breakfast. 

In a week he had showed me all his hiding places. 
The most interesting of these was over a roofed 
piazza in a building near by. He had gnawed a hole 
under the eaves, where it would not be noticed, and 
lived there in solitary grandeur during stormy days 
in a den four by eight feet, and rain-proof. In one 
corner was a bushel of corncofc^, some of them two 
or three years old, which he had stolen from a corn- 
field near by in the early autumn mornings. With 
characteristic improvidence he had fallen to eating 
the corn while yet there was plenty more to be 
gathered. In consequence he was hungry before 
February was half over, and living by his wits, like 
his brother of the wilderness. 

The other squirrels soon noticed his journeys to 
my window, and presently they too came for their 
share. Spite of his fury in driving them away, they 
managed in twenty ways to circumvent him. It was 
most interesting, while he sat on my window-sill 
eating peanuts, to see the nose and eyes of another 
squirrel peering over the crotch of the nearest tree, 
watching the proceedings from his hiding place. 
Then I would give Meeko five or six peanuts at 
once. Instantly the old hiding instinct would come 



Meeko the Mischief- Maker 95 

back; he would start away, taking as much of his 
store as he could carry with him. The moment he 
was gone, out would come a squirrel — sometimes two 
or three from their concealment — and carry off all the 
peanuts that remained. 

Meeko's wrath when he returned was most comical. 
The Indian legend is true as gospel to squirrel nature. 
If he returned unexpectedly and caught one of the 
intruders, there was always a furious chase and a 
deal of scolding and squirrel jabber before peace was 
restored and the peanuts eaten. 

Once, when he had hidden a dozen or more nuts in 
the broken linden branch, a very small squirrel came 
prowling along and discovered the store. In an 
instant he was all alertness, peeking, listening, explor- 
ing, till quite sure that the coast was clear, when he 
rushed away headlong with a mouthful. 

He did not return that day ; but the next morning 
early I saw him do the same thing. An hour later 
Meeko appeared and, finding nothing on the window- 
sill, went to the linden. Half his store of yesterday 
was gone. Curiously enough, he did not suspect at 
first that they were stolen. Meeko is always quite 
sure that nobody knows his secrets. He searched 
the tree over, went to his other hiding places, came 
back, counted his peanuts, then searched the ground 



96 Secrets of the Woods 

beneath, thinking, no doubt, the wind must have 
blown them out — all this before he had tasted a 
peanut of those that remained. 

Slowly it dawned upon him that he had been 
robbed and there was an outburst of wrath. But 
instead of carrying what were left to another place, 
he left them where they were, still without eating, 
and hid himself near by to watch. I neglected a 
lecture in philosophy to see the proceedings, but 
nothing happened. Meeko's patience soon gave out, 
or else he grew hungry, for he ate two or three of 
his scanty supply of peanuts, scolding and threaten- 
ing to himself. But he left the rest carefully where 
they were. 

Two or three times that day I saw him sneaking 
about, keeping a sharp eye on the linden; but the 
little thief was watching too, and kept out of the 
way. 

Early next morning a great hubbub rose outside 
my window, and I jumped up to see what was going 
on. Little Thief had come back, and Big Thief 
caught him in the act of robbery. Away they went 
pell-mell, jabbering like a flock of blackbirds, along a 
linden branch, through two maples, across a driveway, 
and up a big elm where Little Thief whisked out of 
sight into a knot hole. 



Meeko the Mis chief- Maker 97 

After him came Big Thief, swearing vengeance. 
But the knot hole was too small ; he could n't get in. 
Twist and turn and push and threaten as he would, 
he could not get in; and Little Thief sat just inside 
jeering maliciously. 

Meeko gave it up after a while and went off, nursing 
his wrath. But ten feet from the tree a thought struck 
him. He rushed away out of sight, making a great 
noise, then came back quietly and hid under an eave 
where he could watch the knot hole. 

Presently Little Thief came out, rubbed his eyes, 
and looked all about. Through my glass I could see 
Meeko blinking and twitching under the dark eave, 
trying to control his anger. Little Thief ventured to 
a branch a few feet away from his refuge, and Big 
Thief, unable to hold himself a moment longer, rushed 
out, firing a volley of direful threats ahead of him. In 
a flash Little Thief was back in his knot hole and the 
comedy began all over again. 

I never saw how it ended; but for a day or two 
there was an unusual amount of chasing and scolding 
going on outside my windows. 

It was this same big squirrel that first showed me a 
curious trick of hiding. Whenever he found a hand- 
ful of nuts on my window-sill and suspected that 
other squirrels were watching to share the bounty, he 



98 Secrets of the Woods 

had a way of hiding them all very rapidly. He would 
never carry them direct to his various garners; first, 
because these were too far away, and the other squirrels 
would steal while he was gone ; second, because, with 
hungry eyes watching somewhere, they might follow 
and find out where he habitually kept things. So 
he used to hide them all on the ground, under the 
leaves in autumn, under snow in winter, and all within 
sight of the window-sill, where he could watch the 
store as he hurried to and fro. Then, at his leisure, he 
would dig them up and carry them off to his den, two 
cheekfuls at a time. 

Each nut was hidden by itself; never so much as 
two in one spot. For a long time it puzzled me to 
know how he remembered so many places. I noticed 
first that he would always start from a certain point, a 
tree or a stone, with his burden. When it was hidden 
he would come back by the shortest route to the 
window-sill ; but with his new mouthful he would 
always go first to the tree or stone he had selected, 
and from there search out a new hiding place. 

It was many days before I noticed that, starting 
from one fixed point, he generally worked toward 
another tree or stone in the distance. Then his secret 
was out ; he hid things in a line. Next day he would 
come back, start from his fixed point and move slowly 



Meeko the Mis chief- Maker 99 

towards the distant one till his nose told him he was 
over a peanut, which he dug up and ate or carried 
away to his den. But he always seemed to distrust 
himself; for on hungry days he would go over two 
or three of his old lines in the hope of finding a 
mouthful that he had overlooked. 

This method was used only when he had a large 
supply to dispose of hurriedly, and not always then. 
Meeko is a careless fellow and soon forgets. When I 
gave him only a few to dispose of, he hid them helter- 
skelter among the leaves, forgetting some of them 
afterwards and enjoying the rare delight of stumbling 
upon them when he was hungriest — much like a child 
whom I saw once giving himself a sensation. He 
would throw his penny on the ground, go round the 
house, and saunter back with his hands in his pockets 
till he saw the penny, which he pounced upon with 
almost the joy of treasure-trove in the highway. 

Meeko made a sad end — a fate which he deserved 
well enough, but which I had to pity, spite of myself. 
When the spring came on, he went back to evil ways. 
Sap was sweet and buds were luscious with the first 
swelling of tender leaves; spring rains had washed 
out plenty of acorns in the crannies under the big oak, 
and there were fresh-roasted peanuts still at the cor- 
ner window-sill within easy jump of a linden twig ; 



ioo Secrets of the Woods 

but he took to watching the robins to see where they 
nested, and when the young were hatched he came 
no more to my window. Twice I saw him with 
fledgelings in his mouth ; and I drove him day after 
day from a late clutch of robin's eggs that I could 
watch from my study. 

He had warnings enough. Once some students, 
who had been friendly all winter, stoned him out of 
a tree where he was nest-robbing ; once the sparrows 
caught him in their nest under the high eaves, and 
knocked him off promptly. A twig upon which he 
caught in falling saved his life undoubtedly, for the 
sparrows w r ere after him and he barely escaped into 
a knot hole, leaving the angry horde clamoring out- 
side. But nothing could reform him. 

One morning at daylight a great crying of robins 
brought me to the window. Meeko was running 
along a limb, the first of the fledgelings in his mouth. 
After him were five or six robins whom the parents' 
danger cry had brought to the rescue. They w r ere all 
excited and tremendously in earnest. They cried 
thief ! thief ! and swooped at him like hawks. Their 
cries speedily brought a score of other birds, some to 
watch, others to join in the punishment. 

Meeko dropped the young bird and ran for his 
den; but a robin dashed recklessly in his face and 



Meeko the Mischief-Maker 101 

knocked him fair from the tree. That and the fall of 
the fledgeling excited the birds more than ever. This 
thieving bird-eater was not invulnerable. A dozen 
rushed at him on the ground and left the marks of 
their beaks on his coat before he could reach the 
nearest tree. 

Again he rushed for his den, but wherever he 
turned now angry wings fluttered over him and beaks 
jabbed in his face. Raging but frightened, he sat up 
to snarl wickedly. Like a flash a robin hurled him- 
self down, caught the squirrel just under his ear and 
knocked him again to the ground. 

Things began to look dark for Meeko. The birds 
grew bolder and angrier every minute. When he 
started to climb a tree he was hurled off twice ere 
he reached a crotch and drew himself down into it. 
He was safe there with his back against a big limb ; 
they could not get at him from behind. But the 
angry clamor in front frightened him, and again he 
started for his place of refuge. His footing was 
unsteady now and his head dizzy from the blows he 
had received. Before he had gone half a limb's length 
he was again on the ground, with a dozen birds peck- 
ing at him as they swooped over. 

With his last strength he snapped viciously at his 
foes and rushed to the linden. My window was 



to2 Secrets of the Woods 

open, and he came creeping, hurrying towards it on 
the branch over which he had often capered so lightly 
in the winter days. Over him clamored the birds, 
forgetting all fear of me in their hatred of the nest- 
robber. 

A dozen times he was struck on the way, but at 
every blow he clung to the branch with claws and 
teeth, then staggered on doggedly, making no defense. 
His whole thought now was to reach the window-sill. 

At the place where he always jumped he stopped 
and began to sway, gripping the bark with his claws, 
trying to summon strength for the effort. He knew 
it was too much, but it was his last hope. At the 
instant of his spring a robin swooped in his face ; 
another caught him a side blow in mid-air, and he 
fell heavily to the stones below. — Sic semper tyran- 
nis ! yelled the robins, scattering wildly as I ran 
down the steps to save him, if it were not too late. 

He died in my hands a moment later, with curious 
maliciousness nipping my finger sharply at the last 
gasp. He was the only squirrel of the lot who knew 
how to hide in a line ; and never a one since his day 
has taken the jump from oak to maple over the 
driveway. 




ALL the wild birds that still haunt our 
remaining solitudes, the ruffed grouse — 
the pa'tridge of our younger days — is 
perhaps the wildest, the most alert, the most sug- 
gestive of the primeval wilderness that we have lost. 
You enter the woods from the hillside pasture, loung- 
ing a moment on the old gray fence to note the 
play of light and shadow on the birch bolls. Your 
eye lingers restfully on the wonderful mixture of soft 
colors that no brush has ever yet imitated, the rich 
old gold of autumn tapestries, the glimmering gray- 
green of the mouldering stump that the fungi have 
painted. What a giant that tree must have been, 
generations ago, in its days of strength; how puny 

the birches that now grow out of its roots ! You 

103 



104 Secrets of the Woods 

remember the great canoe birches by the wilderness 
river, whiter than the little tent that nestled beneath 
them, their wide bark banners waving in the wind, 
soft as the flutter of owls' wings that swept among 
them, shadow-like, in the twilight. A vague regret 
steals over you that our own wilderness is gone, and 
with it most of the shy folk that loved its solitudes. 

Suddenly there is a rustle in the leaves. Some- 
thing stirs by the old stump. A moment ago you 
thought it was only a brown root ; now it runs, hides, 
draws itself erect — Kwit, kwit, kwit ! and with a 
whirring rush of wings and a whirling eddy of dead 
leaves a grouse bursts up, and darts away like a blunt 
arrow, flint-tipped, gray-feathered, among the startled 
birch stems. As you follow softly to rout him out 
again, and to thrill and be startled by his unexpected 
rush, something of the Indian has come unbidden 
into your cautious tread. All regret for the wilder- 
ness is vanished ; you are simply glad that so much 
wildness still remains to speak eloquently of the good 
old days. 

It is this element of unconquerable wildness in 
the grouse, coupled with a host of early, half-fearful 
impressions, that always sets my heart to beating, as 
to an old tune, whenever a partridge bursts away at 
my feet. I remember well a little child that used to 



The OF Beech Patridge 105 

steal away into the still woods, which drew him by an 
irresistible attraction while as yet their dim arches 
and quiet paths were full of mysteries and haunting 
terrors. Step by step the child would advance into 
the shadows, cautious as a wood mouse, timid as a 
rabbit. Suddenly a swift rustle and a thunderous 
rush of something from the ground that first set the 
child's heart to beating wildly, and then reached his 
heels in a fearful impulse which sent him rushing 
out of the woods, tumbling headlong over the old 
gray wall, and scampering halfway across the pasture 
before he dared halt from the terror behind. And 
then, at last, another impulse which always sent the. 
child stealing back into the woods again, shy, alert, 
tense as a watching fox, to find out what the fearful 
thing was that could make such a commotion in the 
quiet woods. 

And when he found out at last — ah, that was a 
dfscovery beside which the panther's kittens are as 
nothing as I think of them. One day in the woods, 
near the spot where the awful thunder used to burst 
away, the child heard a cluck and a kwit-kwit, and saw 
a beautiful bird dodging, gliding, halting, hiding in 
the underbrush, watching the child's every motion. 
And when he ran forward to put his cap over the bird, 
it burst away, and then — whirr! whirr! whirr! a 



io6 Secrets of the Woods 

whole covey of grouse roared up all about him. The 
terror of it weakened his legs so that he fell down in 
the eddying leaves and covered his ears. But this 
time he knew what it was at last, and in a moment 
he was up and running, not away, but fast as his little 
legs could carry him after the last bird that he saw 
hurtling away among the trees, with a birch branch 
that he had touched with his wings nodding good-by 
behind him. 

There is another association with this same bird 
that always gives an added thrill to the rush of his 
wings through the startled woods. It was in the old 
school by the cross-roads, one sleepy September after- 
noon. A class in spelling, big boys and little girls, 
toed a crack in front of the master's desk. The rest 
of the school droned away on appointed tasks in the 
drowsy interlude. The fat boy slept openly on his 
arms; even the mischief-maker was quiet, thinking 
dreamily of summer days that were gone. Suddenly 
there was a terrific crash, a clattering tinkle of broken 
glass, a howl from a boy near the window. Twenty 
knees banged the desks beneath as twenty boys 
jumped. Then, before any of us had found his wits, 
Jimmy Jenkins, a red-headed boy whom no calamity 
could throw off his balance and from whom no oppor- 
tunity ever got away free, had jumped over two forms 



The 01' Beech Patridge 107 

and was down on the floor in the girls' aisle, gripping 
something between his knees — 

" I ve got him," he announced, with the air of a 
general. 

" Got what ? " thundered the master. 

" Got a pa'tridge ; he 's an old buster," said Jimmy. 
And he straightened up, holding by the legs a fine 
cock partridge whose stiffening wings still beat his 
sides spasmodically. He had been scared-up in the 
neighboring woods, frightened by some hunter out of 
his native coverts. When he reached the unknown 
open places he was more frightened still and, as a 
frightened grouse always flies straight, he had driven 
like a bolt through the schoolhouse window, killing 
himself by the impact. 

Rule-of-three and cube root and the unmapped 
wilderness of partial payments have left but scant 
impression on one of those pupils, at least; but a bird 
that could wake up a drowsy schoolroom and bring 
out a living lesson, full of life and interest and the 
subtile call of the woods, from a drowsy teacher who 
studied law by night, but never his boys by day, — 
that was a bird to be respected. I have studied him 
with keener interest ever since. 

Yet however much you study the grouse, you learn 
little except how wild he is. Occasionally, when you 



lo8 Secrets of the Woods 

are still in the woods and a grouse walks up to your 
hiding place, you get a fair glimpse and an idea or 
two ; but he soon discovers you, and draws himself up 
straight as a string and watches you for five minutes 
without stirring or even winking. Then, outdone at 
his own game, he glides away. A rustle of little feet 
on leaves, a faint kwit-kwit with a question in it, 
and he is gone. Nor w T ill he come back, like the 
fox, to watch from the other side and find out what 
you are. 

Civilization, in its first advances, is good to the 
grouse, providing him with an abundance of food and 
driving away his enemies. Grouse are always more 
numerous about settlements than in the wilderness. 
Unlike other birds, however, he grows wilder and 
wilder by nearness to men's dwellings. I suppose 
that is because the presence of man is so often 
accompanied by the rush of a dog and the report 
of a gun, and perhaps by the rip and sting of shot in 
his feathers as he darts away. Once, in the wilder- 
ness, w T hen very hungry, I caught two partridges by 
slipping over their heads a string noose at the end of 
a pole. Here one might as well try to catch a bat in 
the twilight as to hope to snare one of our upland 
partridges by any such invention, or even to get near 
enough to meditate the attempt. 



The OF Beech Pdtridge 109 

But there was one grouse — and he the very 
wildest of all that I have ever met in the woods — 
who showed me unwittingly many bits of his life, and 
with whom I grew to be very well acquainted after a 
few seasons' watching. All the hunters of the village 
knew him well ; and a half-dozen boys, who owned 
guns and were eager to join the hunters' ranks, had a 
shooting acquaintance with him. He was known far 
and wide as "the ol' beech pa'tridge." That he was 
old no one could deny who knew his ways and his 
devices; and he was frequently scared-up in a beech 
wood by a brook, a couple of miles out of the 
village. 

Spite of much learned discussion as to different 
varieties of grouse, due to marked variations in color- 
ing, I think personally that we have but one variety, 
and that differences in color are due largely to the 
different surroundings in which they live. Of all 
birds the grouse is most invisible when quiet, his 
coloring blends so perfectly with the roots and leaves 
and tree stems among which he hides. This wonder- 
ful invisibility is increased by the fact that he changes 
color easily. He is darker in summer, lighter in 
winter, like the rabbit. When he lives in dark woods 
he becomes a glossy red-brown; and when his haunt 
is among the birches he is often a decided gray. 



no Secrets of the Woods 

This was certainly true of the old beech partridge. 
When he spread his tail wide and darted away among 
the beeches, his color blended so perfectly with the 
gray tree trunks that only a keen eye could separate 
him. And he knew every art of the dodger perfectly. 
When he rose there was scarcely a second of time 
before he had put a big tree between you and him, so 
as to cover his line of flight. I don't know how many 
times he had been shot at on the wing. Every hunter 
I knew had tried it many times ; and every boy who 
roamed the woods in autumn had sought to pot him 
on the ground. But he never lost a feather; and he 
would never stand to a dog long enough for the most 
cunning of our craft to take his position. 

When a brood of young partridges hear a dog 
running in the woods, they generally flit to the lower 
branches of a tree and kwit-kwit at him curiously. 
They have not yet learned the difference between 
him and the fox, who is the ancient enemy of their 
kind, and whom their ancestors of the wilderness 
escaped and tantalized in the same way. But when it is 
an old bird that your setter is trailing, his actions are a 
curious mixture of cunning and fascination. As old 
Don draws to a point, the grouse pulls himself up rig- 
idly by a stump and watches the dog. So both stand 
like statues ; the dog held by the strange instinct which 



The OF Beech Patridge 1 1 1 

makes him point, lost to sight, sound and all things 
else save the smell in his nose, the grouse tense as a 
fiddlestring, every sense alert, watching the enemy 
whom he thinks to be fooled by his good hiding. For 
a few moments they are motionless ; then the grouse 
skulks and glides to a better cover. As the strong 
scent fades from Don's nose, he breaks his point and 
follows. The grouse hears him and again hides by 
drawing himself up against a stump, where he is invis- 
ible ; again Don stiffens into his point, one foot lifted, 
nose and tail in a straight line, as if he were frozen 
and could not move. 

So it goes on, now gliding through the coverts, now 
still as a stone, till the grouse discovers that so long 
as he is still the dog seems paralyzed, unable to move 
or feel. Then he draws himself up, braced against 
a root or a tree boll; and there they stand, within 
twenty feet of each other, never stirring, never wank- 
ing, till the dog falls from exhaustion at the strain, or 
breaks it by leaping forward, or till the hunter's step 
on the leaves fills the grouse with a new terror that 
sends him rushing away through the October woods 
to deeper solitudes. 

Once, at noon, I saw Old Ben, a famous dog, draw 
to a perfect point. Just ahead, in a tangle of brown 
brakes, I could see the head and neck of a grouse 



1 1 2 Sec?~ets of the Woods 

watching the dog keenly. Old Ben's master, to test 
the splendid training of his dog, proposed lunch on the 
spot. We withdrew a little space and ate deliberately, 
watching the bird and the dog with an interest that 
grew keener and keener as the meal progressed, while 
Old Ben stood like a rock, and the grouse's eye shone 
steadily out of the tangle of brakes. Nor did either 
move so much as an eyelid while we ate, and Ben's 
master smoked his pipe with quiet confidence. At 
last, after a full hour, he whacked his pipe on his boot 
heel and rose to reach for his gun. That meant death 
for the grouse ; but I owed him too much of keen 
enjoyment to see him cut down in swift flight. In the 
moment that the master's back was turned I hurled a 
knot at the tangle of brakes. The grouse burst away, 
and Old Ben, shaken out of his trance by the whirr of 
wings, dropped obediently to the charge and turned 
his head to say reproachfully with his eyes : " What in 
the world is the matter with you back there — did n't 
I hold him long enough ? " 

The noble old fellow was trembling like a leaf 
after the long strain when I went up to him to pat his 
head and praise his steadiness, and share with him 
the better half of my lunch. But to this day Ben's 
master does not know what started the grouse so sud- 
denly; and as he tells you about the incident will still 



The 01' Beech Pdtridge 113 

say regretfully : " I ought to a-started jest a minute 
sooner, 'fore he got tired. Then I'da had 'im." 

The old beech partridge, however, was a bird of a 
different mind. No dog ever stood him for more than 
a second ; he had learned too well what the thing 
meant. The moment he heard the patter of a dog's 
feet on leaves he would run rapidly, and skulk and 
hide and run again, keeping dog and hunter on the 
move till he found the cover he 
wanted, — thick trees, or a tangle of { 
wild grapevines. — when he would 

burst out on the farther side. And no 
eye, however keen, could catch more 
/ 7 than a glimpse of a gray tail before he 
was gone. Other grouse make short 
straight flights, and can be followed and found again ; 
but he always drove away on strong wings for an 
incredible distance, and swerved far to right or left; 
so that it was a waste of time to follow him up. Before 
you found him he had rested his wings and was ready 
for another flight; and when you did find him he would 
shoot away like an arrow out of the top of a pine tree 
and give you never a glimpse of himself. 





ii4 Secrets of the Woods 

He lived most of the time on a ridge behind the 
4 Fales place/ an abandoned farm on the east of the 
old post road. This was his middle range, a place of 
dense coverts, bullbrier thickets and sunny open spots 
among the ledges, where you might, with good-luck, 
find him on special days at any season. But he had 
all the migratory instincts of a Newfoundland caribou. 
In winter he moved south, with twenty other grouse, 
to the foot of the ridge, which dropped away into a 
succession of knolls and ravines and sunny, well-pro- 
tected little valleys, where food was plenty. Here, fifty 
years ago, was the farm pasture; but now it had grown 
up everywhere with thickets and berry patches, and 
wild apple trees of the birds' planting. All the birds 
loved it in their season ; quail nested on its edges ; and 
you could kick a brown rabbit out of almost any of its 
decaying brush piles or hollow moss-grown logs. 

In the spring he crossed the ridge northward again, 
moving into the still dark woods, where he had two or 
three wives with as many broods of young partridges ; 
all of whom, by the way, he regarded with astonishing 
indifference. 

Across the whole range — stealing silently out of 
the big woods, brawling along the foot of the ridge and 
singing through the old pasture — ran a brook that 
the old beech partridge seemed to love. A hundred 



The 01' Beech Patridge 115 

times I started him from its banks. You had only to 
follow it any November morning before eight o'clock, 
and you would be sure to find him. But why he 
haunted it at this particular time and season I never 
found out. 

I used to wonder sometimes why I never saw him 
drink. Other birds had their regular drinking places 
and bathing pools there, and I frequently watched 
them from my hiding; but though I saw him many 
times, after I learned his haunts, he never touched 
the water. 

One early summer morning a possible explanation 
suggested itself. I was sitting quietly by the brook, 
on the edge of the big woods, waiting for a pool to 
grow quiet, out of which I had just taken a trout and 
in which I suspected there was a larger one hiding. 
As I waited a mother-grouse and her brood — one of 
the old beech partridge's numerous families for whom 
he provided nothing- — came gliding along the edge 
of the woods. They had come to drink, evidently, but 
not from the brook. A sweeter draught than that was 
waiting for their coming. The dew was still clinging 
to the grass blades ; here and there a drop hung from 
a leaf point, flashing like a diamond in the early light. 
And the little partridges, cheeping, gliding, whistling 
among the drooping stems, would raise their little 



1 1 6 Secrets of the Woods 

bills for each shining dewdrop that attracted them, 
and drink it down and run with glad little pipings 
and gurglings to the next drop that flashed an invita- 
tion from its bending grass blade. The old mother 
walked sedately in the midst of them, now fussing 
over a laggard, now clucking them all together in an 
eager, chirping, jumping little crowd, each one strug- 
gling to be first in at the death of a fat slug she 
had discovered on the underside of a leaf ; and anon 
reaching herself for a dewdrop that hung too high 
for their drinking. So they passed by within a few 
yards, a shy, wild, happy little family, and disappeared 
into the shadow of the big woods. 

Perhaps that is why I never saw the old beech par- 
tridge drink from the brook. Nature has a fresher 
draught, of her own distilling, that is more to his 
tasting. 

Earlier in the season I found another of his families 
near the same spot. I was stealing along a wood road 
when I ran plump upon them, scratching away at an 
ant hill in a sunny open spot. There was a wild 
flurry, as if a whirlwind had struck the ant hill ; but it 
was only the wind of the mother bird's wings, whirling 
up the dust to blind my eyes and to hide the scam- 
pering retreat of her downy brood. Again her wings 
beat the ground, sending up a flurry of dead leaves, in 



The OF Beech Patridge 117 

the midst of which the little partridges jumped and 
scurried away, so much like the leaves that no eye 
could separate them. Then the leaves settled slowly 
and the brood was gone, as if the ground had swal- 
lowed them up ; while Mother Grouse went fluttering 
along just out of my reach, trailing a wing as if 
broken, falling prone on the ground, clucking and 
kwitting and whirling the leaves to draw my attention 
and bring me away from where the little ones were 
hiding. 

I knelt down just within the edge of woods, whither 
I had seen the last laggard of the brood vanish like a 
brown streak, and began to look for them carefully. 
After a time I found one. He was crouched flat on 
a dead oak leaf, just under my nose, his color hiding 
him wonderfully. Something glistened in a tangle of 
dark roots. It was an eye, and presently I could make 
out a little head there. That was all I could find of 
the family, though a dozen more were close beside me, 
under the leaves mostly. As I backed away I put my 
hand on another before seeing him, and barely saved 
myself from hurting the little sly-boots, who never 
stirred a muscle, not even when I took away the leaf 
that covered him and put it back again softly. 

Across the pathway was a thick scrub oak, under 
which I sat down to watch. Ten long minutes 



1 1 8 Secrets of the Woods 

passed, with nothing stirring, before Mother Grouse 
came stealing back. She clucked once — " Careful ! " 
it seemed to say ; and not a leaf stirred. She clucked 
again — did the ground open ? There they were, a 
dozen or more of them, springing up from nowhere 
and scurrying with a thousand cheepings to tell 
her all about it. So she gathered them all close 
about her, and they vanished into the friendly 
shadows. 

It was curious how jealously the old beech partridge 
watched over the solitudes where these interesting 
little families roamed. Though he seemed to care 
nothing about them, and was never seen near one of 
his families, he suffered no other cock partridge to 
come into his woods, or even to drum within hearing. 
In the winter he shared the southern pasture peace- 
ably with twenty other grouse; and on certain days 
you might, by much creeping, surprise a whole com- 
pany of them on a sunny southern slope, strutting and 
gliding, in and out and round about, with spread tails 
and drooping wings, going through all the movements 
of a grouse minuet. Once, in Indian summer, I crept 
up to twelve or fifteen of the splendid birds, who were 
going through their curious performance in a little 
opening among the berry bushes ; and in the midst of 
them — more vain, more resplendent, strutting more 



The 01' Beech Pdtridge 119 

proudly and clucking more arrogantly than any 
other — was the old beech partridge. 

But when the spring came, and the long rolling 
drum-calls began to throb through the budding woods, 
he retired to his middle range on the ridge, and 
marched from one end to the other, driving every other 
cock grouse out of hearing, and drubbing him soundly 
if he dared resist. Then, after a triumph, you would 
hear his loud drum-call rolling through the May splen- 
dor, calling as many wives as possible to share his rich 
living. 

He had two drumming logs on this range, as I soon 
discovered ; and once, while he was drumming on one 
log, I hid near the other and imitated his call fairly 
well by beating my hands on a blown bladder that I 
had buttoned under my jacket. The roll of a grouse 
drum is a curiously muffled sound ; it is often hard to 
determine the spot or even the direction whence it 
comes ; and it always sounds much farther away than 
it really is. This may have deceived the old beech 
partridge at first into thinking that he heard some 
other bird far away, on a ridge across the valley where 
he had no concern ; for presently he drummed again 
on his own log. I answered it promptly, rolling back 
a defiance, and also telling any hen grouse on the range 
that here was another candidate willing to strut and 



120 



Secrets of the Woods 



spread his tail and lift the resplendent ruff about his 
neck to win his way into her good graces, if she would 
but come to his drumming log and see him. 

Some suspicion that a rival had come to his range 
must have entered the old beech partridge's head, for 
there was a long silence in which I could fancy him 
standing up straight and stiff on his drumming log, 
listening intently to locate the daring intruder, and 
holding down his bubbling wrath with difficulty. 

Without waiting for him to drum again, I beat out 
a challenge. The roll had barely ceased when he came 
darting up the ridge, glancing like a bolt among the 
thick branches, and plunged down by his own log, 
where he drew himself up with marvelous suddenness 
to listen and watch for the intruder. 

He seemed relieved that the log was not occu- 
pied, but he was still full of wrath and suspicion. 
He glided and dodged all about the place, looking 
and listening ; then he sprang to his log and, without 
waiting to strut and spread his gorgeous feathers 
as usual, he rolled out the long call, drawing himself 
up straight the instant it was done, turning his head 
from side to side to catch the first beat of his rival's 
answer — " Come out, if you dare; drum, if you dare. 
Oh, you coward ! " And he hopped, five or six high, 
excited hops, like a rooster before a storm, to the 



The OP Beech Pa fridge 121 

other end of the log, and again his quick throbbing 
drum-call rolled through the woods. 

Though I was near enough to see him clearly with- 
out my field glasses, I could not even then, nor at any 
other time when I have watched grouse drumming, 
determine just how the call is given. After a little 
while the excitement of a suspected rival's presence 
wore away, and he grew exultant, thinking that he had 
driven the rascal out of his woods. He strutted back 
and forth on the log, trailing his wings, spreading 
wide his beautiful tail, lifting his crest and his resplen- 
dent ruff. Suddenly he would draw himself up; there 
would be a flash of his wings up and down that no eye 
could follow, and I would hear a single throb of his 
drum. Another flash and another throb ; then faster 
and faster, till he seemed to have two or three pairs of 
wings, whirring and running together like the spokes 
of a swift-moving wheel, and the drumbeats rolled 
together into a long call and died away in the woods. 

Generally he stood up on his toes, as a rooster 
does when he flaps his wings before crowing; rarely 
he crouched down close to the log ; but I doubt if he 
beat the wood with his wings, as is often claimed. 
Yet the two logs were different ; one was dry and 
hard, the other mouldy and moss-grown ; and the 
drum-calls were as different as the two logs. After 



122 Secrets of the Woods 

a time I could tell by the sound which log he was 
using at the first beat of his wings ; but that, I think, 
was a matter of resonance, a kind of sounding-board 
effect, and not because the two sounded differently 
as he beat them. The call is undoubtedly made 
either by striking the wings together over his back 
or, as I am inclined to believe, by striking them on 
the down beat against his own sides. 

Once I heard a wounded bird give three or four 
beats of his drum-call, and when I went into the 
grapevine thicket, where he had fallen, I found him 
lying flat on his back, beating his sides with his 
wings. 

Whenever he drums he first struts, because he 
know r s not how many pairs of bright eyes are watch- 
ing him shyly out of the coverts. Once, when I had 
watched him strut and drum a few times, the leaves 
rustled, and two hen grouse emerged from opposite 
sides into the little opening where his log was. Then 
he strutted with greater vanity than before, while the 
two hen grouse went gliding about the place, search- 
ing for seeds apparently, but in reality watching his 
every movement out of their eye corners, and admir- 
ing him to his heart's content. 

In winter I used to follow his trail through the 
snow to find what he had been doing, and what he 



The OP Beech Fdtridge 123 

had found to eat in nature's scarce time. His worst 
enemies, the man and his dog, were no longer to be 
feared, being restrained by law, and he roamed the 
woods with greater freedom than ever. He seemed 
to know that he was safe at this time, and more than 
once I trailed him up to his hiding and saw him 
whirr away through the open woods, sending down a 
shower of snow behind him, as if in that curious 
way to hide his line of flight from my eyes. 

There were other enemies, however, whom no law 
restrained, save the universal wood-laws of fear and 
hunger. Often I found the trail of a fox crossing his 
in the snow ; and once I followed a double trail, fox 
over grouse, for nearly half a mile. The fox had 
struck the trail late the previous afternoon, and fol- 
lowed it to a bullbrier thicket, in the midst of which 
was a great cedar in which the old beech partridge 
roosted. The fox went twice around the tree, halting 
and looking up, then went straight away to the swamp, 
as if he knew it was of no use to watch longer. 

Rarely, when the snow was deep, I found the place 
where he, or some other grouse, went to sleep on the 
ground. He would plunge down from a tree into the 
soft snow, driving into it head-first for three or four 
feet, then turn around and settle down in his white 
warm chamber for the night. I would find the small 



124 Secrets of the Woods 

hole where he plunged in at evening, and near it the 
great hole where he burst out when the light waked 
him. Taking my direction from his wing prints in 
the snow, I would follow to find w T here he lit, and then 
trace him on his morning wanderings. 

One would think that this might be a dangerous 
proceeding, sleeping on the ground with no protection 
but the snow, and a score of hungry enemies prowl- 
ing about the woods ; but the grouse knows w r ell that 
when the storms are out his enemies stay close at 
home, not being able to see or smell, and therefore 
afraid. each one of his own enemies. There is always 
a truce in the woods during a snowstorm ; and that 
is the reason why a grouse goes to sleep in the snow 
only while the flakes are still falling. When the storm 
is over and the snow has settled a bit, the fox will 
be abroad again ; and then the grouse sleeps in the 
evergreens. 

Once, however, the old beech partridge miscalcu- 
lated. The storm ceased early in the evening, and 
hunger drove the fox out on a night when, ordinarily, 
he would have stayed under cover. Sometime about 
daybreak, before yet the light had penetrated to where 
the old beech partridge was sleeping, the fox found a 
hole in the snow, which told him that just in front of 
his hungry nose a grouse was hidden, all unconscious 




k ^ 



IVvUss Co^fcVr^Ad, . 



The OT Beech Pdtridge 125 



of danger. I found the spot, trailing the fox, a few 
hours later. How cautious he was ! The sly trail 
was eloquent with hunger and anticipation. A few 
feet away from the promising hole he had stopped, 
looking keenly over the snow to find some suspicious 
roundness on the smooth surface. Ah ! there it was, 
just by the edge of a juniper thicket. He crouched 
down, stole forward, pushing a deep trail with his 
body, settled himself firmly and sprang. And there, 
just beside the hole his paws had made in the snow, 
was another hole where the grouse had burst out, 
scattering snow all over his enemy, who had miscal- 
culated by a foot, and thundered away to the safety 
and shelter of the pines. 

There was another enemy, who ought to have 
known better, following the old beech partridge all 
one early spring when snow was deep and food scarce. 
One day, in crossing the partridge's southern range, 
I met a small boy, — a keen little fellow, with the 
instincts of a fox for hunting. He had always some- 
thing interesting afoot, — minks, or muskrats, or a 
skunk, or a big owl, — so I hailed him with joy. 
" Hello, Johnnie ! what you after to-day — bears ? " 
But he only shook his head — a bit sheepishly, I 
thought — and talked of all things except the one 
that he was thinking about ; and presently he vanished 



126 Secrets of the Woods 

down the old road. One of his jacket pockets bulged 
more than the other, and I knew there was a trap in it. 

Late that afternoon I crossed his trail and, having 
nothing more interesting to do, followed it. It led 
straight to the bullbrier thicket where the old beech 
partridge roosted. I had searched for it many times 
in vain before the fox led me to it ; but Johnnie, in 
some of his prowlings, had found tracks and a feather 
or two under a cedar branch, and knew just what it 
meant. His trap was there, in the very spot where, 
the night before, the old beech partridge had stood 
when he jumped for the lowest limb. Corn was scat- 
tered liberally about, and a bluejay that had followed 
Johnnie was already fast in the trap, caught at the 
base of his bill just under the eyes. He had sprung 
the trap in pecking at some corn that was fastened 
cunningly to the pan by fine wire. 

When I took the jay carefully from the trap he 
played possum, lying limp in my hand till my grip 
relaxed, when he flew to a branch over my head, 
squalling and upbraiding me for having anything to 
do with such abominable inventions. 

I hung the trap to a low limb of the cedar, with a 
note in its jaws telling Johnnie to come and see me 
next day. He came at dusk, shamefaced, and I read 
him a lecture on fair play and the difference between 



The OV Beech Pdtridge 127 

a thieving mink and an honest partridge. But he 
chuckled over the bluejay, and I doubted the with- 
holding power of a mere lecture ; so, to even matters, 
I hinted of an otter slide I had discovered, and of a 
Saturday-afternoon tramp together. Twenty times, he 
told me, he had tried to snare the old beech partridge. 
When he saw the otter slide he forswore traps and 
snares for birds ; and I left the place, soon after, with 
good hopes for the grouse, knowing that I had spiked 
the guns of his most dangerous enemy. 

Years later I crossed the old pasture and went 
straight to the bullbrier tangle. There were tracks 
of a grouse in the snow, — blunt tracks that rested 
lightly on the soft whiteness, showing that Nature 
remembered his necessity and had caused his new 
snowshoes to grow famously. I hurried to the brook, 
a hundred memories thronging over me of happy days 
and rare sights when the wood folk revealed their little 
secrets. In the midst of them — kwit ! kwit ! and 
with a thunder of wings a grouse whirred away, wild 
and gray as the rare bird that lived there years before. 
And when I questioned a hunter, he said : " That oY 
beech pa'tridge ? Oh, yes, he 's there. He '11 stay 
there, too, till he dies of old age ; 'cause you see, 
Mister, there ain't nobody in these parts spry enough 
to ketch 'im." 




I&OWING 
TUB DEER* 



WAS camping one summer on a little lake — 
Deer Pond, the natives called it — a few miles 
back from a quiet summer resort on the Maine 
coast. Summer hotels and mackerel fishing and noisy 
excursions had lost their semblance to a charm ; so I 
made a little tent, hired a canoe, and moved back 
into the woods. 

It was better here. The days were still and long, 
and the nights full of peace. The air was good, for 
nothing but the wild creatures breathed it, and the 
firs had touched it with their fragrance. The far- 
away surge of the sea came up faintly till the spruces 
answered it, and both sounds went gossiping over 

the hills together. On all sides were the woods, 

128 



Following the Deer 129 

which, on the north especially, stretched away over a 
broken country beyond my farthest explorations. 

Over against my tenting place a colony of herons 
had their nests in some dark hemlocks. They were 
interesting as a camp of gypsies, some going off in 
straggling bands to the coast at daybreak, others 
frogging in the streams, and a few solitary, patient, 
philosophical ones joining me daily in following 
the gentle art of Izaak Walton. And then, when the 
sunset came and the deep red glowed just behind the 
hemlocks, and the gypsy bands came home, I would 
see their sentinels posted here and there among 
the hemlock tips — still, dark, graceful silhouettes 
etched in sepia against the gorgeous afterglow — and 
hear the mothers croaking their ungainly babies to 
sleep in the tree tops. 

Down at one end of the pond a brood of young 
black ducks were learning their daily lessons in 
hiding ; at the other end a noisy kingfisher, an 
honest blue heron, and a thieving mink shared the 
pools and watched each other as rival fishermen. 
Hares by night, and squirrels by day, and wood mice 
at all seasons played round my tent, or came shyly 
to taste my bounty. A pair of big owls lived and 
hunted in a swamp hard by, who hooted dismally 
before the storms came, and sometimes swept within 



130 Secrets of the Woods 

the circle of my fire at night. Every morning a 
raccoon stopped at a little pool in the brook above 
my tent, to wash his food carefully ere taking it home. 
vSo there was plenty to do and plenty to learn, and 
the days passed all too swiftly. 

I had been told by the village hunters that there 
were no deer; that they had vanished long since, 
hounded and crusted and chevied out of season, till 
life was not worth the living. So it was with a start 
of surprise and a thrill of new interest that I came 
upon the tracks of a large buck and two smaller deer 
on the shore one morning. I was following them 
eagerly when I ran plump upon Old Wally, the 
cunningest hunter and trapper in the whole region. 

" Sho ! Mister, what yer follerin ? " 

" Why, these deer tracks," I said simply. 

Wally gave me a look of great pity. 

" Guess you 're green — one o' them city fellers, 
ain't ye, Mister? Them ere's sheep tracks — my 
sheep. Wandered off int' th' woods a spell ago, and I 
hain't seen the tarnal critters since. Came up here 
lookin' for um this mornin'." 

I glanced at Wally's fish basket, and thought of 
the nibbled lily pads ; but I said nothing. Wally 
was a great hunter, albeit jealous ; apt to think of all 
the game in the woods as being sent by Providence 



Following the Deer 131 

to help him get a lazy living ; and I knew little about 
deer at that time. So I took him to camp, fed him, 
and sent him away. 

" Kinder keep a lookout for my sheep, will ye, 
Mister, down 't this end o' the pond ? " he said, 
pointing away from the deer tracks. " If ye see ary 
one, send out word, and I '11 come and fetch 'im. — 
Needn't foller the tracks though; they wander like 
all possessed this time o' year," he added earnestly 
as he went away. 

That afternoon I went over to a little pond, a mile 
distant from my camp, and deeper in the woods. 
The shore was well cut up with numerous deer 
tracks, and among the lily pads everywhere were 
signs of recent feeding. There was a man's track 
here too, which came cautiously out from a thick 
point of woods, and spied about on the shore, and 
went back again more cautiously than before. I 
took the measure of it back to camp, and found 
that it corresponded perfectly with the boot tracks 
of Old Wally. There were a few deer here, undoubt- 
edly, which he was watching jealously for his own 
benefit in the fall hunting. 

When the next still, misty night came, it found me 
afloat on the lonely little pond, with a dark lantern 
fastened to an upright stick just in front of me in the 



132 Secrets of the Woods 

canoe. In the shadow of the shores all was black as 
Egypt; but out in the middle the outlines of the 
pond could be followed vaguely by the heavy cloud 
of woods against the lighter sky. The stillness was 
intense; every slightest sound, — the creak of a 
bough or the ripple of a passing musquash, the 
plunk of a water drop into the lake or the snap 
of a rotten twig, broken by the weight of clinging 
mist, — came to the strained ear with startling sud- 
denness. Then, as I waited and sifted the night 
sounds, a dainty plop, plop, plop ! sent the canoe 
gliding like a shadow toward the shore whence the 
sounds had come. 

When the lantern opened noiselessly, sending a 
broad beam of gray, full of shadows and misty lights, 
through the even blackness of the night, the deer 
stood revealed — a beautiful creature, shrinking back 
into the forest's shadow, yet ever drawn forward by 
the sudden wonder of the light. 

She turned her head towards me, and her eyes 
blazed like great colored lights in the lantern's reflec- 
tion. They fascinated me; I could see nothing but 
those great glowing spots, blazing and scintillating 
with a kind of intense fear and wonder out of the 
darkness. She turned away, unable to endure the 
glory any longer ; then released from the fascination 



Following the Deer 133 

of her eyes, I saw her hurrying along the shore, a 
graceful living shadow among the shadows, rubbing 
her head among the bushes as if to brush away from 
her eyes the charm that dazzled them. 

I followed a little way, watching every move, till 
she turned again, and for a longer time stared stead- 
fastly at the light. It was harder this time to break 
away from its power. She came nearer two or three 
times, halting between dainty steps to stare and 
wonder, while her eyes blazed into mine. Then, as 
she faltered irresolutely, I reached forward and closed 
the lantern, leaving lake and woods in deeper dark- 
ness than before. At the sudden release I heard her 
plunge out of the water; but a moment later she was 
moving nervously among the trees, trying to stamp 
herself up to the courage point of coming back to 
investigate. And when I flashed my lantern at the 
spot she threw aside caution and came hurriedly down 
the bank again. 

Later that night I heard other footsteps in the 
pond, and opened my lantern upon three deer, a doe, 
a fawn and a large buck, feeding at short intervals 
among the lily pads. The buck was wild ; after one 
look he plunged into the woods, whistling danger to 
his companions. But the fawn heeded nothing, knew 
nothing for the moment save the fascination of the 



134 Secrets of the Woods 

wonderful glare out there in the darkness. Had I 
not shut off the light, I think he would have climbed 
into the canoe in his intense wonder. 

I saw the little fellow again, in a curious way, a few 
nights later. A wild storm was raging over the 
woods. Under its lash the great trees writhed and 
groaned ; and the " voices " — that strange phenomenon 
of the forest and rapids — were calling wildly through 
the roar of the storm and the rush of rain on innu- 
merable leaves. I had gone out on the old wood 
road, to lose myself for a little while in the intense 
darkness and uproar, and to feel again the wild thrill 
of the elements. But the night was too dark, the 
storm too fierce. Every few moments I would 
blunder against a tree, which told me I was off the 
road ; and to lose the road meant to wander all night 
in the storm-swept woods. So I went back for my 
lantern, with which I again started down the old cart 
path, a little circle of wavering, jumping shadows 
about me, the one gray spot in the midst of universal 
darkness. 

I had gone but a few hundred yards when there 
was a rush — it was not the wind or the rain — in a 
thicket on my right. Something jumped into the 
circle of light. Two bright spots burned out of the 
darkness, then two more ; and with strange bleats a 



Following the Deer 135 

deer came close to me with her fawn. I stood stock- 
still, with a thrill in my spine that was not altogether 
of the elements, while the deer moved uneasily back 
and forth. The doe wavered between fear and fasci- 
nation ; but the fawn knew no fear, or perhaps he 
knew only the great fear of the uproar around him ; 
for he came close beside me, rested his nose an 
instant against the light, then thrust his head be- 
tween my arm and body, so as to shield his eyes, 
and pressed close against my side, shivering with cold 
and fear, pleading dumbly for my protection against 
the pitiless storm. 

I refrained from touching the little thing, for no 
wild creature likes to be handled, while his mother 
called in vain from the leafy darkness. When I 
turned to go he followed me close, still trying to 
thrust his face under my arm ; and I had to close the 
light with a sharp click before .he bounded away 
down the road, where one who knew better than I 
how to take care of a frightened innocent was, no 
doubt, waiting to receive him. 

I gave up everything else but fishing after that, 
and took to watching the deer; but there was little 
to be learned in the summer woods. Once I came 
upon the big buck lying down in a thicket. I was 
following his track, trying to learn the Indian 



136 Secrets of the Woods 

trick of sign-trailing, when he shot up in front of me 
like Jack-in-a-box, and was gone before I knew 
what it meant. From the impressions in the moss, 
I concluded that he slept with all four feet under 
him, ready to shoot up at an instant's notice, with 
power enough in his spring to clear any obstacle 
near him. And then I thought of the way a cow 
gets up, first one end, then the other, rising from 
the fore knees at last with puff and grunt and clack- 
ing of joints ; and I took my first lesson in whole- 
some respect for the creature whom I already 
considered mine by right of discovery, and whose 
splendid head I saw, in anticipation, adorning the 
hall of my house — to the utter discomfiture of 
Old Wally. 

At another time I crept up to an old road beyond 
the little deer pond, where three deer, a mother with 
her fawn, and a young spike-buck, were playing. 
They kept running up and down, leaping over the 
trees that lay across the road with marvelous ease 
and grace — that is, the two larger deer. The little 
fellow followed awkwardly ; but he had the spring in 
him, and was learning rapidly to gather himself for 
the rise, and lift his hind feet at the top of his jump, 
and come down with all fours together, instead of 
sprawling clumsily, as a horse does. 



Following the Deer 137 

I saw the perfection of it a few days later. I was 
sitting before my tent door at twilight, watching the 
herons, when there was a shot and a sudden crash 
over on their side. In a moment the big buck 
plunged out of the woods and went leaping in swift 
bounds along the shore, head high, antlers back, the 
mighty muscles driving him up and onward as if 
invisible wings were bearing him. A dozen great 
trees were fallen across his path, one of which, as I 
afterwards measured, lay a clear eight feet above the 
sand. But he never hesitated nor broke his splendid 
stride. He would rush at a tree ; rise light and swift 
till above it, where he turned as if on a pivot, with 
head thrown back to the wind, actually resting an 
instant in air at the very top of his jump; then shoot 
downward, not falling but driven still by the impulse 
of his great muscles. When he struck, all four feet 
were close together ; and almost quicker than the eye 
could follow he was in the air again, sweeping along 
the water's edge, or rising like a bird over the next 
obstacle. 

Just below me was a stream, with muddy shores on 
both sides. I looked to see if he would stoo: himself 
there or turn aside ; but he knew the place better than 
I, and that just under the soft mud the sand lay firm 
and sure. He struck the muddy place only twice, 



138 Secrets of the Woods 

once on either side the fifteen-foot stream, sending 
out a light shower of mud in all directions ; then, 
because the banks on my side were steep, he leaped 
for the cover of the woods and was gone. 

I thought I had seen the last of him, when I heard 
him coming, bump/ bump ! bump ! the swift blows of 
his hoofs sounding all together on the forest floor. 
So he flashed by, between me and my tent door, 
barely swerved aside for my fire, and gave me another 
beautiful run down the old road, rising and falling 
light as thistle-down, with the old trees arching over 
him and brushing his antlers as he rocketed along. 

The last branch had hardly swished behind him 
when, across the pond, the underbrush parted cau- 
tiously and Old Wally appeared, trailing a long gun. 
He had followed scarcely a dozen of the buck's jumps 
when he looked back and saw me watching him from 
beside a great maple. 

" Just a-follerin one o' my tarnal sheep. Strayed 
off day 'fore yesterday. Hain't seen 'im, hev ye ? " he 
bawled across. 

" Just went along ; ten or twelve points on his 
horns. And say, Wally" — 

The old sinner, who w T as glancing about furtively 
to see if the white sand showed any blood stains, 
looked up quickly at the changed tone — 



Following the Deer 139 

" You let those sheep of yours alone till the first of 
October ; then I '11 help you round 'em up. Just now 
they're worth forty dollars apiece to the state. I '11 see 
that the warden collects it, too, if you shoot another." 

" Sho ! Mister, I ain't a-shootin' no deer. Hain't 
seen a deer round here in ten year or more. I just 
took a crack at a pa'tridge 'at kwitted at me, top o' a 
stump " — 

But as he vanished among the hemlocks, trailing 
his old gun, I knew that he understood the threat. 
To make the matter sure I drove the deer out of the 
pond that night, giving them the first of a series of 
rude lessons in caution, until the falling leaves should 
make them wild enough to take care of themselves. 

STILL HUNTING 

October, the superb month for one who loves 
the forest, found me again in the same woods, this 
time not to watch and learn, but to follow the bio- 
buck to his death. Old Wally was ahead of me ; but 
the falling leaves had done their work well. The 
deer had left the pond at his approach. Here and 
there on the ridges I found their tracks, and saw 



140 Secrets of the Woods 

them at a distance, shy, wild, alert, ready to take care 
of themselves in any emergency. The big buck led 
them everywhere. Already his spirit, grown keen in 
long battle against his enemies, dominated them all. 
Even the fawns had learned fear, and followed it as 
their salvation. 

Then began the most fascinating experience that 
comes to one who haunts the woods — the first, thrill- 
ing, glorious days of the still-hunter's schooling, with 
the frost-colored October woods for a schoolroom, 
and Nature herself for the all-wise teacher. Daylight 
found me far afield, while the heavy mists hung low 
and the night smells still clung to the first fallen 
leaves, moving swift and silent through the chill 
fragrant mistiness of the lowlands, eye and ear alert 
for every sign, and face set to the heights where the 
deer were waiting. Noon found me miles away on 
the hills, munching my crust thankfully in a sunny 
opening of the woods, with a brook's music tinkling 
among the mossy stones at my feet, and the gorgeous 
crimson and green and gold of the hillside stretching 
down and away, like a vast Oriental rug of a giant's 
weaving, to the flash and blue gleam of the distant 
sea. And everywhere — Nature's last subtle touches 
to her picture — the sense of a filmy veil let down 
ere the end was reached, a soft haze on the glowing 



Following the Deer 141 

hilltops, a sheen as of silver mist along the stream 
in the valley, a fleecy light-shot cloud on the sea, to 
suggest more, and more beautiful, beyond the veil. 

Evening found me hurrying homeward through the 
short twilight, along silent wood roads from which 
the birds had departed, breathing deep of the pure air 
with its pungent tang of ripened leaves, sniffing the 
first night smells, listening now for the yap of a fox, 
now for the distant bay of a dog to guide me in a 
short cut over the hills to where my room in the old 
farmhouse was waiting. 

It mattered little that, far behind me (though not so 
far from where the trail ended), the big buck began his 
twilight wandering along the ridges, sniffing alertly 
at the vanishing scent of the man on his feeding 
ground. The best things that a hunter brings home 
are in his heart, not in his game bag ; and a free 
deer meant another long glorious day following him 
through the October woods, making the tyro's mis- 
takes, to be sure, but feeling also the tyro's thrill and 
the tyro's wonder, and the consciousness of growing 
power and skill to read in a new language the secrets 
that the moss and leaves hide so innocently. 

There was so much to note and learn and remem- 
ber in those days ! A bit of moss with that curiously 
measured angular cut in it, as if the wood folk had 



142 Secrets of the Woods 

taken to studying Euclid, — how wonderful it was 
at first ! The deer had been here ; his foot drew 
that sharp triangle ; and I must measure and feel it 
carefully, and press aside the moss, and study the 
leaves, to know whether it were my big buck or no, 
and how long since he had passed, and whether he 
were feeding or running or just nosing about and 
watching the valley below. And all that is much to 
learn from a tiny triangle in the moss, with imaginary 
a, b, cs clinging to the dried moss blossoms. 

How careful one had to be ! Every shift of wind, 
every cloud shadow had to be noted. The lesson of 
a dewdrop, splashed from a leaf in the early morning ; 
the testimony of a crushed flower, or a broken brake, 
or a bending grass blade ; the counsel of a bit of bark 
frayed from a birch tree, with a shred of deer-velvet 
clinging to it, — all these were vastly significant and 
interesting. Every copse and hiding place and cathe- 
dral aisle of the big woods in front must be searched 
with quiet eyes far ahead, as one glided silently from 
tree to tree. That depression in the gray moss of a 
fir thicket, with two others near it — three deer lay 
down there last night; no, this morning; no, scarcely 
an hour ago, and the dim traces along the ridge show 
no sign of hurry or alarm. So I move on, following 
surely the trail that, only a few days since, would have 



Following the Deer 143 

been invisible as the trail of a fish in the lake to my 
unschooled eyes, searching, searching everywhere for 
dim forms gliding among the trees, till — a scream, a 
whistle, a rush away ! And I know that the bluejay, 
which has been gliding after me curiously the last 
ten minutes, has fathomed my intentions and flown 
ahead to alarm the deer, which are now bounding 
away for denser cover. 

I brush ahead heedlessly, knowing that caution 
here only wastes time, and study the fresh trail where 
the quarry jumped away in alarm. Straight down 
the wind it goes. Cunning old buck ! He has no 
idea what Bluejay 's alarm was about, but a warning, 
whether of crow or jay or tainted wind or snapping 
twig, is never lost on the wood folk. Now as he 
bounds along, cleaving the woods like a living bolt, 
yet stopping short every hundred yards or so to whirl 
and listen and sort the messages that the wood wires 
bring to him, he is perfectly sure of himself and 
his little flock, knowing that if danger follow 7 down 
wind, his own nose will tell him all about it. I 
glance at the sun ; only another hour of light, and 
I am six miles from home. I glance at the jay, 
flitting about restlessly in a mixture of mischief and 
curiosity, whistling his too-loo-loo loudly as a sign to 
the fleeing game that I am right here and that 



144 Secrets of the Woods 

he sees me. Then I take up the back trail, planning 
another day. 

So the days went by, one after another; the big 
buck, aided by his friends the birds, held his own 
against my craft and patience. He grew more wild 
and alert with every hunt, and kept so far ahead of 
me that only once, before the snow blew, did I have 
even the chance of stalking him, and then the cunning 
old fellow foiled me again masterfully. 

Old Wally was afield too ; but, so far as I could 
read from the woods' record, he fared no better than 
I on the trail of the buck. Once, when I knew my 
game was miles ahead, I heard the long-drawn whang 
of Wally's old gun across a little valley. Presently 
the brush began to crackle, and a small doe came 
jumping among the trees straight towards me. 
Within thirty feet she saw me, caught herself at the 
top of her jump, came straight down, and stood an 
instant as if turned to stone, with a spruce branch 
bending over to hide her from my eyes. Then, when 
I moved not, having no desire to kill a doe but only 
to watch the beautiful creature, she turned, glided a 
few steps, and went bounding away along the ridge. 

Old Wally came in a little while, not following the 
trail, — he had no skill nor patience for that, — but 
with a woodsman's instinct following up the general 



Following the Deer 145 

direction of his game. Not far from where the doe 
had first appeared he stopped, looked all around 
keenly, then rested his hands on the end of his long 
gun barrel, and put his chin on his hands. 

" Drat it all ! Never tetched 'im again. That 
paowder o' mine hain't wuth a cent. You wait till 
snow blows," — addressing the silent woods at large, — 
" then I '11 get me some paowder as is paowder, and 
foller the critter, and I '11 show ye " — 

Old Wally said never a word, but all this was in 
his face and attitude as he leaned moodily on his 
long gun. And I watched him, chuckling, from my 
hiding among the rocks, till with curious instinct he 
vanished down the ridge behind the very thicket 
where I had seen the doe flash out of sight a 
moment before. 

When I saw him again he was deep in less credi- 
table business. It was a perfect autumn day, — the 
air full of light and color, the fragrant woods resting 
under the soft haze like a great bouquet of Nature's 
own culling, birds, bees and squirrels frolicking all 
day long amidst the trees, yet doing an astonishing 
amount of work in gathering each one his harvest 
for the cold dark days that were coming. 

At daylight, from the top of a hill, I looked down on 
a little clearing and saw the first signs of the game I 



146 Secrets of the Woods 

was seeking. There had been what old people call a 
duck-frost. In the meadows and along the fringes 
of the woods the white rime lay thick and powdery 
on grass and dead leaves ; every foot that touched it 
left a black mark, as if seared with a hot iron, when 
the sun came up and shone upon it. Across the field 
three black trails meandered away from the brook ; 
but alas ! under the fringe of evergreen was another 
trail, that of a man, which crept and halted and hid, 
yet drew nearer and nearer the point where the three 
deer trails vanished into the wood. Then I found 
powder marks, and some brush that was torn by buck- 
shot, and three trails that bounded away, and a tiny 
splash of deeper red on a crimson maple leaf. So I 
left the deer to the early hunter and wandered away 
up the hill for a long, lazy, satisfying day in the woods 
alone. 

Presently I came to a low brush fence running 
zigzag through the woods, with snares set every few 
yards in the partridge and rabbit runs. At the third 
opening a fine cock partridge swung limp and lifeless 
from a twitch-up. The cruel wire had torn his neck 
under his beautiful ruff; the broken wing quills 
showed how terrible had been his struggle. Hung 
by the neck till dead ! — an atrocious fate to mete out 
to a noble bird. I followed the hedge of snares for a 



Following the Deer 147 

couple of hundred yards, finding three more strangled 
grouse and a brown rabbit. Then I sat down in a 
beautiful spot to watch the life about me, and to 
catch the snarer at his abominable work. 

The sun climbed higher and blotted out the four 
trails in the field below. Red squirrels came down 
close to my head to chatter and scold and drive me 
out of the solitude. A beautiful gray squirrel went 
tearing by among the branches, pursued by one of 
the savage little reds that nipped and snarled at his 
heels. The two cannot live together, and the gray 
must always go. Jays stopped spying on the squirrels 
— to see and remember where their winter stores 
were hidden — and lingered near me, whistling their 
curiosity at the silent man below. None but jays 
gave any heed to the five grim corpses swinging by 
their necks over the deadly hedge, and to them it 
was only a new sensation. 

Then a cruel thing happened, — one of the many 
tragedies that pass unnoticed in the woods. There 
was a scurry in the underbrush, and strange cries like 
those of an agonized child, only tiny and distant, as 
if heard in a phonograph. Over the sounds a crow 
hovered and rose and fell, in his intense absorption 
seeing nothing but the creature below. Suddenly he 
swooped like a hawk into a thicket, and out of the 



148 Secrets of the Woods 

cover sprang a leveret (young hare), only to crouch 
shivering in the open space under a hemlock's droop- 
ing branches. There the crow headed him, struck 
once, twice, three times, straight hard blows with his 
powerful beak ; and when I ran to the spot the 
leveret lay quite dead with his skull split, while the 
crow went flapping wildly to the tree tops, giving 
the danger cry to the flock that was gossiping in the 
sunshine on the ridge across the valley. 

The woods were all still after that ; jays and 
squirrels seemed appalled at the tragedy, and avoided 
me as if I were responsible for the still little body 
under the hemlock tips. An hour passed; then, a 
quarter-mile away, in the direction that the deer had 
taken in the early morning, a single jay set up his 
cry, the cry of something new passing in the woods. 
Two or three others joined him ; the cry came nearer. 
A flock of crossbills went whistling overhead, coming 
from the same direction. Then, as I slipped away 
into an evergreen thicket, a partridge came whirring 
up, and darted by me like a brown arrow driven by 
the bending branches behind him, flicking the twigs 
sharply with his wings as he drove along. And then, 
on the path of his last forerunner, Old Wally appeared, 
his keen eyes searching his murderous gibbet-line 
expectantly. 



Following the Deer 149 

Now Old Wally was held in great reputation by the 
Nimrods of the village, because he hunted partridges, 
not with " scatter-gun " and dog, — such amateurish 
bungling he disdained and swore against, — but in 
the good old-fashioned way of stalking with a rifle. 
And when he brought his bunch of birds to market, 
his admirers pointed with pride to the marks of his 
wondrous skill. Here was a bird with the head hang- 
ing by a thread of skin ; there one with its neck broken ; 
there a furrow along the top of the head ; and here — 
perfect work ! — a partridge with both eyes gone, 
showing the course of his unerring bullet. 

Not ten yards from my hiding place he took down 
a partridge from its gallows, fumbled a pointed stick 
out of his pocket, ran it through the bird's neck, 
and stowed the creature that had died miserably, 
without a chance for its life, away in one of his big 
pockets, a self-satisfied grin on his face as he glanced 
down the hedge and saw another bird swinging. So 
he followed his hangman's hedge, treating each bird 
to his pointed stick, carefully resetting the snares 
after him and clearing away the fallen leaves from 
the fatal pathways. When he came to the rabbit 
he harled him dexterously, slipped him over his long 
gun barrel, took his bearings in a quick look, and 
struck over the ridge for another southern hillside. 



150 Secrets of the Woods 

Here, at last, was the secret of Wally's boasted 
skill in partridge hunting with a rifle. Spite of my 
indignation at the snare line, the cruel death which 
gaped day and night for the game as it ran about 
heedlessly in the fancied security of its own coverts, 
a humorous, half shame-faced feeling of admiration 
would creep in as I thought of the old sinner's cun- 
ning, and remembered his look of disdain when he 
met me one day, with a " scatter-gun" in my hands 
and old Don following obediently at heel. Thinking 
that in his long life he must have learned many 
things in the woods that I would be glad to know, I 
had invited him cordially to join me. But he only 
withered me with the contempt in his hawk eyes, and 
wiggled his toe as if holding back a kick from my 
honest dog with difficulty. 

" Go hunting with ye ? Not much, Mister. Scarin' 
a pa'tridge to death with a dum dog, and then turnin' 
a handful o' shot loose on the critter, an' call it 
huntin' ! That's the way to kill a pa'tridge, the on'y 
decent way" — and he pulled a bird out of his pocket, 
pointing to a clean hole through the head where the 
eyes had been. 

When he had gone I kicked the hedge to pieces 
quickly, cut the twitch-ups at the butts and threw 
them with their wire nooses far into the thickets, and 



Following the Deer 151 

posted a warning in a cleft stick on the site of the 
last gibbet. Then I followed Wally to a second and 
third line of snares, which were treated in the same 
rough way, and watched him with curiously mingled 
feelings of detestation and amusement as he sneaked 
down the dense hillside with tread light as Leather- 
stocking, the old gun over his shoulder, his pockets 
bulging enormously, and a string of hanged rabbits 
swinging to and fro on his gun barrel, as if in death 
they had caught the dizzy motion and could not quit 
it while the woods they had loved and lived in threw 
their long sad shadows over them. So they came to 
the meadow, into which they had so often come limp- 
ing down to play or feed among the twilight shadows, 
and crossed it for the last time on Wally's gun barrel, 
swinging, swinging. 

The leaves were falling thickly now ; they formed 
a dry, hard carpet over which it was impossible to 
follow game accurately, and they rustled a sharp 
warning underfoot if but a wood mouse ran over 
them. It was of little use to still-hunt the wary old 
buck till the rains should soften the carpet, or a snow- 
fall make tracking like boys' play. But I tried it 
once more; found the quarry on a ridge deep in the 
woods, and followed — more by good-luck than by 
good management — till, late in the afternoon, I saw 



152 Secrets of the Woods 

the buck with two smaller deer standing far away on 
a half-cleared hillside, quietly watching a wide stretch 
of country below. Beyond them the ridge narrowed 
gradually to a long neck, ending in a high open bluff 
above the river. 

There I tried my last hunter's dodge — manceu- 
vered craftily till near the deer, which were hidden 
by dense thickets, and rushed straight at them, think- 
ing they would either break away down the open 
hillside, and so give me a running shot, or else rush 
straightaway at the sudden alarm and be caught on 
the bluff beyond. 

Was it simple instinct, I wonder, or did the buck 
that had grown old in hunter's wiles feel what was 
passing in my mind, and like a flash take the chance 
that would save, not only his own life, but the lives of 
the two that followed him ? At the first alarm they 
separated ; the two smaller deer broke away down 
the hillside, giving me as pretty a shot as one could 
wish. But I scarcely noticed them ; my eyes were 
following eagerly a swift waving of brush tops, which 
told me that the big buck was jumping away, straight 
into the natural trap ahead. 

I followed on the run till the ridge narrowed so 
that I could see across it on either side, then slowly, 
carefully, steadying my nerves for the shot. The 



Following the Deer 153 

river was all about him now, too wide to jump, too 
steep-banked to climb down ; the only way out was 
past me. I gripped the rifle hard, holding it at a 
ready as I moved forward, watching either side for 
a slinking form among the scattered coverts. At last, 
at last ! and how easy, how perfectly I had trapped 
him ! My heart was singing as I stole along. 

The tracks moved straight on ; first an easy run, 
then a swift, hard rush as they approached the river. 
But what was this ? The whole end of the bluff was 
under my eye, and no buck standing at bay or running 
wildly along the bank to escape. The tracks moved 
straight on to the edge in great leaps ; my heart 
quickened its beat as if I were nerving myself for a 
supreme effort. Would he do it ? would he dare ? 

A foot this side the brink the lichens were torn away 
where the sharp hoofs had cut down to solid earth. 
Thirty feet away, well over the farther bank and ten 
feet below the level where I stood, the fresh earth 
showed clearly among the hoof-torn moss. Far below, 
the river fretted and roared in a white rush of rapids. 
He had taken the jump, a jump that made one's nos- 
trils spread and his breath come hard as he measured 
it with his eye. Somewhere, over in the spruces' 
shadow there, he was hiding, watching me no doubt 
to see if I would dare follow. 



154 Secrets of the Woods 

That was the last of the autumn woods for me. If 
I had only seen him — just one splendid glimpse as 
he shot over and poised in mid-air, turning for the 
down plunge ! That was my only regret as I turned 
slowly away, the river singing beside me and the 
shadows lengthening along the home trail. 



WINTER TRAILS 

The snow had come, and with it a Christmas holi- 
day. For weeks I had looked longingly out of college 
windows as the first tracking-snows came sifting down, 
my thoughts turning from books and the problems of 
human wisdom to the winter woods, with their wide 
white pages written all over by the feet of wild things. 
Then the sun would shine again, and I knew that the 
records were washed clean, and the hard-packed leaves 
as innocent of footmarks as the beach where plover 
feed when a great wave has chased them away. On 
the twentieth a change came. Outside the snow fell 
heavily, two days and a night ; inside, books were 
packed away, professors said Merry Christmas, and 
students were scattering, like a bevy of flushed quail, 
to all points of the compass for the holidays. The 



Following the Deer 155 

afternoon of the twenty-first found me again in my 
room under the eaves of the old farmhouse. 

Before dark I had taken a wide run over the hills 
and through the woods to the place of my summer 
camp. How wonderful it all was ! The great woods 
were covered deep with their pure white mantle ; not 
a fleck, not a track soiled its even whiteness ; for the 
last soft flakes were lingering in the air, and fox and 
grouse and hare and lucivee were still keeping the 
storm truce, hidden deep in their coverts. Every fir 
and spruce and hemlock had gone to building fairy 
grottoes as the snow packed their lower branches, 
under which all sorts of wonders and beauties might 
be hidden, to say nothing of the wild things for 
whom Nature had been building innumerable tents 
of white and green as they slept. The silence was 
absolute, the forest's unconscious tribute to the Won- 
der Worker. Even the trout brook, running black 
as night among its white-capped boulders and delicate 
arches of frost and fern work, between massive banks 
of feathery white and green, had stopped its idle 
chatter and tinkled a low bell under the ice, as if only 
the Angelus could express the wonder of the world. 

As I came back softly in the twilight a movement 
in an evergreen ahead caught my eye, and I stopped 
for one of the rare sights of the woods, - — a partridge 



156 Secrets of the Woods 

going to sleep in a warm room of his own making. 
He looked all about among the trees most carefully, 
listened, kwit-kwitted in a low voice to himself, then, 
with a sudden plunge, swooped downward head-first 
into the snow. I stole to the spot where he had dis- 
appeared, noted the direction of his tunnel, and fell 
forward with arms outstretched, thinking perhaps to 
catch him under me and examine his feet to see how 
his natural snowshoes (Nature's winter gift to every 
grouse) were developing, before letting him go again. 
But the grouse was an old bird, not to be caught 
napping, who had thought on the possibilities of being 
followed ere he made his plunge. He had ploughed 
under the snow for a couple of feet, then swerved 
sharply to the left and made a little chamber for him- 
self just under some snow-packed spruce tips, with a 
foot of snow for a blanket over him. When I fell 
forward, disturbing his rest most rudely ere he had 
time to wink the snow out of his eyes, he burst out 
with a great whirr and sputter between my left hand 
and my head, scattering snow all over me, and thun- 
dered off through the startled woods, flicking a 
branch here and there with his wings, and shaking 
down a great white shower as he rushed away for 
deeper solitudes. There, no doubt, he went to sleep 
in the evergreens, congratulating himself on his escape 



Following the Deer 157 

and preferring to take his chances with the owl, rather 
than with some other ground-prowler that might come 
nosing into his hole before the light snow had time 
to fill it up effectually behind him. 

Next morning I was early afield, heading for a ridge 
where I thought the deer of the neighborhood might 
congregate with the intention of yarding for the 
winter. At the foot of a wild little natural meadow, 
made centuries ago by the beavers, I found the trail 
of two deer which had been helping themselves to 
some hay that had been cut and stacked there the 
previous summer. My big buck was not with them ; 
so I left the trail in peace to push through a belt of 
woods and across a pond to an old road that led for a 
mile or two towards the ridge I was seeking. 

Early as I was, the wood folk were ahead of me. 
Their tracks were everywhere, eager, hungry tracks, 
that poked their noses into every possible hiding 
place of food or game, showing how the two-days' fast 
had whetted their appetites and set them to running 
keenly the moment the last flakes were down and the 
storm truce ended. 

A suspicious-looking clump of evergreens, where 
something had brushed the snow rudely from the 
feathery tips, stopped me as I hurried down the old 
road. Under the evergreens was a hole in the snow. 



158 Secrets of the Woods 

and at the bottom of the hole hard inverted cups 
made by deer's feet. I followed on to another hole in 
the snow (it could scarcely be called a trail) and then 
to another, and another, some twelve or fifteen feet 
apart, leading in swift bounds to some big timber. 
There the curious track separated into three deer 
trails, one of which might well be that of a ten-point 
buck. Here was luck, — luck to find my quarry so 
early on the first day out, and better luck that, during 
my long absence, the cunning animal had kept him- 
self and his consort clear of Old Wally and his 
devices. 

When I ran to examine the back trail more care- 
fully, I found that the deer had passed the night in a 
dense thicket of evergreen, on a hilltop overlooking 
the road. They had come down the hill, picking 
their way among the stumps of a burned clearing, 
stepping carefully in each other's tracks so as to make 
but a single trail. At the road they had leaped clear 
across from one thicket to another, leaving never a 
trace on the bare even whiteness. One might have 
passed along the road a score of times without 
noticing that game had crossed. There was no 
doubt now that these were deer that had been often 
hunted, and that had learned their cunning from 
long experience. 



Following the Deer 159 

I followed them rapidly till they began feeding in 
a little valley, then with much caution, stealing from 
tree to thicket, giving scant attention to the trail, but 
searching the woods ahead ; for the last " sign " 
showed that I was now but a few minutes behind the 
deer. There they were at last, two graceful forms 
gliding like gray shadows among the snow-laden 
branches. But in vain I searched for a lordly head 
with wide rough antlers sweeping proudly over the 
brow ; my buck was not there. Scarcely had I made 
the discovery when there was a whistle and a plunge 
up on the hill on my left, and I had one swift glimpse 
of him, a splendid creature, as he bounded away. 

By way of general precaution, or else led by some 
strange sixth sense of danger, he had left his compan- 
ions feeding and mounted the hill, where he could look 
back on his own track. There he had been watching 
me for half an hour, till I approached too near, when 
he sounded the alarm and was off. I read it all from 
the trail a few moments later. 

It was of no use to follow him, for he ran straight 
down wind. The two others had gone quartering off 
at right angles to his course, obeying his signal 
promptly, but having as yet no idea of what danger 
followed them. When alarmed in this way, deer never 
run far before halting to sniff and listen. Then, if 



160 Secrets of the Woods 

not disturbed, they run off again, circling back and 
down wind so as to catch from a distance the scent 
of anything that follows on their trail. 

I sat still where I was for a good hour, watching 
the chickadees and red squirrels that found me 
speedily, and refusing to move for all the peekings 
and whistlings of a jay that would fain satisfy his 
curiosity as to whether I meant harm to the deer, or 
were just benumbed by the cold and incapable of 
further mischief. When I went on I left some 
scattered bits of meat from my lunch to keep him 
busy in case the deer were near ; but there was no 
need of the precaution. The two had learned the 
leader's lesson of caution well, and ran for a mile, with 
many haltings and circlings, before they began to 
feed again. Even then they moved along at a good 
pace as they fed, till a mile farther on, when, as I had 
forelayed, the buck came down from a hill to join 
them, and all three moved off toward the big ridge, 
feeding as they went. 

Then began a long chase, a chase which for the 
deer meant a straightaway game, and for me a series 
of wide circles — never following the trail directly, 
but approaching it at intervals from leeward, hoping 
to circle ahead of the deer and stalk them at last from 
an unexpected quarter. 



Following the Deer 161 

Once, when I looked down from a bare hilltop 
into a valley where the trail ran, I had a most inter- 
esting glimpse of the big buck doing the same thing 
from a hill farther on — too far away for a shot, but 
near enough to see plainly through my field glass. 
The deer were farther ahead than I supposed. They 
had made a run for it, intending to rest after first 
putting a good space between them and anything that 
might follow. Now they were undoubtedly lying down 
in some far-away thicket, their minds at rest, but their 
four feet doubled under them for a jump at short 
notice. Trust your nose, but keep your feet under 
you — that is deer wisdom on going to sleep. Mean- 
while, to take no chances, the wary old leader had 
circled back, to wind the trail and watch it awhile 
from a distance before joining them in their rest. 

He stood stock-still in his hiding, so still that one 
might have passed close by without noticing him. 
But his head was above the low evergreens ; eyes, 
ears, and nose were busy giving him perfect report of 
everything that passed in the woods. 

I started to stalk him promptly, creeping up the 
hill behind him, chuckling to myself at the rare sport 
of catching a wild thing at his own game. But before 
I sighted him again he grew uneasy (the snow tells 
everything), trotted down hill to the trail, and put his 



1 62 Secrets of the Woods 

nose into it here and there to be sure it was not pol- 
luted. Then — another of his endless devices to make 
the noonday siesta full of contentment — he followed 
the back track a little way, stepping carefully in his 
own footprints ; branched off on the other side of the 
trail, and so circled swiftly back to join his little flock, 
leaving behind him a sad puzzle of disputing tracks 
for any novice that might follow him. 

So the interesting chase went on all day, skill 
against keener cunning, instinct against finer instinct, 
through the white wonder of the winter woods, till, 
late in the afternoon, it swung back towards the start- 
ing point. The deer had undoubtedly intended to 
begin their yard that day on the ridge I had selected ; 
for at noon I crossed the trail of the two from the 
haystack, heading as if by mutual understanding in 
that direction. But the big buck, feeling that he was 
followed, cunningly led his charge away from the 
spot, so as to give no hint of the proposed winter 
quarters to the enemy that was after him. Just as 
the long shadows were stretching across all the valleys 
from hill to hill, and the sun vanished into the last 
gray bank of clouds on the horizon, my deer recrossed 
the old road, leaping it, as in the morning, so as to 
leave no telltale track, and climbed the hill to the dense 
thicket where they had passed the previous night. 



Following the Deer 163 

Here was my last chance, and I studied it deliber- 
ately. The deer were there, safe within the ever- 
greens, I had no doubt, using their eyes for the open 
hillside in front and their noses for the woods behind. 
It was useless to attempt stalking from any direction, 
for the cover was so thick that a fox could hardly 
creep through without alarming ears far less sensi- 
tive than a deer's. Skill had failed ; their cunning 
was too much for me. I must now try an appeal to 
curiosity. 

I crept up the hill flat on my face, keeping stump 
or scrub spruce always between me and the thicket 
on the hilltop. The wind was in my favor; I had 
only their eyes to consider. Somewhere, just within 
the shadow, at least one pair were sweeping the back 
track keenly ; so I kept well away from it, creeping 
slowly up till I rested behind a great burned stump 
within forty yards of my game. There I fastened a 
red bandanna handkerchief to a stick and waved it 
slowly above the stump. 

Almost instantly there was a snort and a rustle 
of bushes in the thicket above me. Peeking out I 
saw the evergreens moving nervously; a doe's head 
appeared, her ears set forward, her eyes glistening. 
I waved the handkerchief more erratically. My rifle 
lay across the stump's roots, pointing straight at her; 



164 Secrets of the Woods 

but she was not the game I was hunting. Some more 
waving and dancing of the bright color, some more 
nervous twitchings and rustlings in the evergreens, 
then a whistle and a rush ; the doe disappeared ; the 
movement ceased ; the thicket was silent as the 
winter woods behind me. 

"They are just inside, ,, I thought, "pawing the 
snow to get their courage up to come and see." So 
the handkerchief danced on — one, two, five minutes 
passed in silence; then something made me turn 
round. There in plain sight behind me, just this 
side the fringe of evergreen that lined the old road, 
stood my three deer in a row — the big buck on the 
right — like three beautiful statues, their ears all for- 
ward, their eyes fixed with intensest curiosity on the 
man lying at full length in the snow with the queer 
red flag above his head. 

My first motion broke up the pretty tableau. 
Before I could reach for my rifle the deer whirled 
and vanished like three winks, leaving the heavy ever- 
green tips nodding and blinking behind them in a 
shower of snow. 

Tired as I was, I took a last run to see from the 
trail how it all happened. The deer had been stand- 
ing just within the thicket as I approached. All 
three had seen the handkerchief ; the tracks showed 



Following the Deer 165 

that they had pawed the snow and moved about ner- 
vously. When the leader whistled they had bounded 
straightaway down the steep on the other side. But 
the farms lay in that direction, so they had skirted 
the base of the hill, keeping within the fringe of woods 
and heading back for their morning trail, till the 
red flag caught their eye again, and strong curiosity 
had halted them for another look. 

Thus the long hunt ended at twilight within sight 
of the spot where it began in the gray morning still- 
ness. With marvelous cunning the deer circled into 
their old tracks and followed them till night turned 
them aside into a thicket. This I discovered at 
daylight next morning. 

That day a change came ; first a south wind, then 
in succession a thaw, a mist, a rain turning to snow, 
a cold wind and a bitter frost. Next day when I 
entered the woods a brittle crust made silent travel- 
ing impossible, and over the rocks and bare places 
was a sheet of ice covered thinly with snow. 

I was out all day, less in hope of finding deer than 
of watching the wild things; but at noon, as I sat 
eating my lunch, I heard a rapid running, crunch^ 
crunch, crunch, on the ridge above me. I stole up, 
quietly as I could, to find the fresh trails of my three 
deer. They were running from fright evidently, and 



1 66 Secrets of the Woods 

were very tired, as the short irregular jumps showed. 
Once, where the two leaders cleared a fallen log, the 
third deer had fallen heavily ; and all three trails 
showed blood stains where the crust had cut into 
their legs. 

I waited there on the trail to see what was follow- 
ing — to give right of way to any hunter, but with a 
good stout stick handy, for dealing with dogs, which 
sometimes ran wild in the woods and harried the 
deer. For a long quarter-hour the woods were all 
still ; then the jays, which had come whistling up on 
the trail, flew back screaming and scolding, and a 
huge yellow mongrel, showing hound's blood in his 
ears and nose, came slipping, limping, whining over 
the crust. I waited behind a tree till he was up with 
me, when I jumped out and caught him a resounding 
thump on the ribs. As he ran yelping away I fired 
my rifle over his head, and sent the good club with 
a vengeance to knock his heels from under him. A 
fresh outburst of howls inspired me with hope. Per- 
haps he would remember now to let deer alone for 
the winter. 

Above the noise of canine lamentation I caught the 
faint click of snowshoes, and hid again to catch the 
cur's owner at his contemptible work. But the sound 
stopped far back on the trail at the sudden uproar. 



Following the Deer 167 

Through the trees I caught glimpses of a fur cap and 
a long gun and the hawk face of Old Wally, peeking, 
listening, creeping on the trail, and stepping gingerly 
at last down the valley, ashamed or afraid of being 
caught at his unlawful hunting. " An ill wind, but it 
blows me good," I thought, as I took up the trail of 
the deer, half ashamed myself to take advantage of 
them when tired by the dog's chasing. 

There was no need of commiseration, however ; 
now that the dog was out of the way they could take 
care of themselves very well. I found them resting 
only a short distance ahead ; but when I attempted to 
stalk them from leeward the noise of my approach on 
the crust sent them off with a rush before I caught 
even a glimpse of them in their thicket. 

I gave up caution then and there. I was fresh and 
the deer were tired, — why not run them down and get 
a fair shot before the sun went down and left the 
woods too dark to see a rifle sight ? I had heard that 
the Indians used sometimes to try running a deer 
down afoot in the old days ; here was the chance to 
try a new experience. It was fearfully hard traveling 
without snowshoes, to be sure ; but that seemed only 
to even-up chances fairly with the deer. At the 
thought I ran on, giving no heed when the quarry 
jumped again just ahead of me, but pushing them 



1 68 Secrets of the Woods 

steadily, mile after mile, till I realized with a thrill 
that I was gaining rapidly, that their pauses grew 
more and more frequent, and I had constant glimpses 
of deer ahead among the trees — never of the big 
buck, but of the two does, who were struggling 
desperately to follow their leader as he kept well 
ahead of them breaking the way. Then realizing, I 
think, that he was followed by strength rather than 
by skill or cunning, the noble old fellow tried a last 
trick, which came near being the end of my hunting 
altogether. 

The trail turned suddenly to a high open ridge 
with scattered thickets here and there. As they 
labored up the slope I had the does in plain sight. 
On top the snow was light, and they bounded ahead 
with fresh strength. The trail led straight along the 
edge of a cliff, beyond which the deer had vanished. 
They had stopped running here ; I noticed with 
amazement that they had walked with quick short 
steps across the open. Eager for a sight of the buck, 
I saw only the thin powdering of snow ; I forgot the 
glare ice that covered the rock beneath. The deer's 
sharp hoofs had clung to the very edge securely. My 
heedless feet had barely struck the rock when they 
slipped and I shot over the cliff, thirty feet to the 
rocks below. Even as I fell and the rifle flew from 



Following the Deer 169 

my grasp, I heard the buck's loud whistle from the 
thicket where he was watching me, and then the 
heavy plunge of the deer as they jumped away. 

A great drift at the foot of the cliff saved me. I 
picked myself up, fearfully bruised but with nothing 
broken, found my rifle and limped away four miles 
through the woods to the road, thinking as I went 
that I was well served for having delivered the deer 
"from the power of the dog," only to take advantage 
of their long run to secure a head that my skill had 
failed to win. I wondered, with an extra twinge in my 
limp, whether I had saved Old Wally by taking the 
chase out of his hands unceremoniously. Above all, I 
wondered — and here I would gladly follow another 
trail over the same ground — whether the noble beast, 
grown weary with running, his splendid strength fail- 
ing for the first time, and his little, long-tended flock 
ready to give in and have the tragedy over, knew just 
what he was doing in mincing along the cliff's edge 
with his heedless enemy close behind. What did he 
think and feel, looking back from his hiding, and what 
did his loud whistle mean ? But that is always the 
despair of studying the wild things. When your prob- 
lem is almost solved, night comes and the trail ends. 

When I could walk again easily vacation was over, 
the law was on, and the deer were safe. 



170 Secrets of the Woods 



*■* - "- 
SNOW BOUND 

March is a weary month for the wood folk. One 
who follows them then has it borne in upon him 
continually that life is a struggle, — a keen, hard, 
hunger-driven struggle to find enough to keep 
a-going and sleep warm till the tardy sun comes 
north again with his rich living. The fall abundance 
of stored food has all been eaten, except in out-of- 
the-way corners that one stumbles upon in a long 
day's wandering; the game also is wary and hard 
to find from being constantly hunted by eager 
enemies. 

It is then that the sparrow falleth. You find him 
on the snow, a wind-blown feather guiding your eye 
to the open where he fell in mid-flight ; or under the 
tree, which shows that he lost his grip in the night. 
His empty crop tells the whole pitiful story, and why 
you find him there cold and dead, his toes curled up 
and his body feather-light. You would find more 
but for the fact that hunger-pointed eyes are keener 
than yours and earlier abroad, and that crow and jay 
and mink and wildcat have greater interest than you 
in finding where the sparrow fell, 



Following the Deer 171 

It is then, also, that the owl, who hunts the sparrow 
o' nights, grows so light from scant feeding that he 
cannot fly against the wind. If he would go back to 
his starting point while the March winds are out, he 
must needs come down close to the ground and yew- 
yaw towards his objective, making leeway like an old 
boat without ballast or centerboard. 

The grouse have taken to bud-eating from necessity 
— birch buds mostly, with occasional trips to the 
orchards for variety. They live much now in the 
trees, which they dislike ; but with a score of hungry 
enemies prowling for them day and night, what can 
a poor grouse do ? 

When a belated snow falls, you follow their particu- 
lar enemy, the fox, where he wanders, wanders, wan- 
ders on his night's hunting. Across the meadow, to 
dine on the remembrance of field mice — alas ! safe 
now under the crust; along the brook, where he once 
caught frogs ; through the thicket, where the grouse 
were hatched ; past the bullbrier tangle, where the 
covey of quail once rested nightly ; into the farmyard, 
where the dog is loose and the chickens are safe 
under lock and key, instead of roosting in trees ; 
across the highway, and through the swamp, and into 
the big bare empty woods ; till in the sad gray morn- 
ing light he digs under the wild apple tree and sits 



172 Secrets of the Woods 

down on the snow to eat a frozen apple, lest his 
stomach cry too loudly while he sleeps the day away 
and tries to forget that he is hungry. 

Everywhere it is the same story: hard times and 
poor hunting. Even the chickadees are hard pressed 
to keep up appearances and have their sweet love 
note ready at the first smell of spring in the air. 

This was the lesson that the great woods whispered 
sadly when a few idle March days found me gliding 
on snowshoes over the old familiar ground. Wild 
geese had honked an invitation from the South Shore ; 
but one can never study a wild goose ; the only satis- 
faction is to see him swing in on broad wings over 
the decoys — one glorious moment ere the gun speaks 
and the dog jumps and everything is spoiled. So I 
left gun and rifle behind, and went off to the woods 
of happy memories to see how my deer were faring. 

The wonder of the snow was gone ; there was left 
only its cold bitterness and a vague sense that it 
ought no longer to cumber the ground, but would 
better go away as soon as possible and spare the wood 
folk any more suffering. The litter of a score of 
storms covered its soiled rough surface ; every shred 
of bark had left its dark stain where the decaying sap 
had melted and spread in the midday sun. The hard 
crust, which made such excellent running for my 



Following the Deer 173 

snowshoes, seemed bitterly cruel when I thought of 
the starving wild things and of the abundance of food 
on the brown earth, just four feet below their hungry 
bills and noses. 

The winter had been unusually severe. Reports 
had come to me from the North Woods of deep 
snows, and of deer dying of starvation and cold in 
their yards. I confess that I was anxious as I hurried 
along. Now that the hunt was over and the deer had 
won, they belonged to me more than ever — more even 
than if the stuffed head of the buck looked down on 
my hall, instead of resting proudly over his own 
strong shoulders. My snowshoes clicked a rapid 
march through the sad gray woods, while the March 
wind thrummed an accompaniment high up among 
the bare branches, and the ground-spruce nodded 
briskly, beating time with their green tips, as if glad 
of any sound or music that would break the chill 
silence until the birds came back. 

Here and there the snow told stories; gay stories, 
tragic stories, sad, wandering, patient stories of the 
little woods-people, which the frost had hardened into 
crust, as if Nature would keep their memorials for- 
ever, like the records on the sun-hardened bricks of 
Babylon. But would the deer live ? Would the big 
buck's cunning provide a yard large enough for wide 



174 Secrets of the Woods 

wandering, with plenty of browse along the paths to 
carry his flock safely through the winter's hunger? 
That was a story, waiting somewhere ahead, which 
made me hurry away from the foot-written records 
that otherwise would have kept me busy for hours. 

Crossbills called welcome to me, high overhead. 
Nothing can starve them out. A red squirrel rushed 
headlong out of his hollow tree at the first click of my 
snowshoes. Nothing can check his curiosity or his 
scolding except his wife, whom he likes, and the wea- 
sel, whom he is mortally afraid of. Chickadees fol- 
lowed me shyly with their blandishments — tsic-a-deeee? 
with that gentle up-slide of questioning. " Is the 
spring really coming ? Are — are you a harbinger ? " 

But the snowshoes clicked on, away from the sweet 
blarney, leaving behind the little flatterers w 7 ho were 
honestly glad to see me in the w r oods again, and who 
would fain have delayed me. Other questions, stern 
ones, w^ere calling ahead. Would the cur dogs find 
the yard and exterminate the innocents ? Would 
Old Wally — but no; Wally had the " rheumatiz," 
and was out of the running. Ill- wind blew the deer 
good that time; else he would long ago have run 
them down on snowshoes and cut their throats, as if 
they were indeed his " tarnal sheep " that had run 
wild in the woods. 



Following the Deer 175 

At the southern end of a great hardwood ridge I 
found the first path of their yard. It was half filled 
with snow, unused since the last two storms. A 
glance on either side, where everything eatable within 
reach of a deer's neck had long ago been cropped 
close, showed plainly why the path was abandoned. 
I followed it a short distance before running into 
another path, and another, then into a great tangle 
of deer ways spreading out crisscross over the eastern 
and southern slopes of the ridge. 

In some of the paths were fresh deer tracks and 
the signs of recent feeding. My heart jumped at 
sight of one great hoof mark. I had measured and 
studied it too often to fail to recognize its owner. 
There was browse here still, to be had for the crop- 
ping. I began to be hopeful for my little flock, and 
to feel a higher regard for their leader, w r ho could 
plan a yard, it seemed, as well as a flight, and who 
could not be deceived by early abundance into out- 
lining a small yard, forgetting the late snows and the 
spring hunger. 

I was stooping to examine the more recent signs, 
when a sharp snort made me raise my head quickly. 
In the path before me stood a doe, all a-quiver, her 
feet still braced from the suddenness with which she 
had stopped at sight of an unknown object blocking 



1 76 Secrets of the Woods 

the path ahead. Behind her two other deer checked 
themselves and stood like statues, unable to see, but 
obeying their leader promptly. 

All three were frightened and excited, not simply 
curious, as they would have been had they found me 
in their path unexpectedly. The widespread nostrils 
and heaving sides showed that they had been running 
hard. Those in the rear (I could see them over the 
top of the scrub spruce, behind which I crouched in 
the path) said in every muscle : " Go on ! No matter 
what it is, the danger behind is worse. Go on, go 
on ! " Insistence was in the air. The doe felt it and 
bounded aside. The crust had softened in the 
sun, and she plunged through it when she- struck, 
cr-r-runch, cr-r~runch, up to her sides at every jump. 
The others followed, just swinging their heads for a 
look and a sniff at me, springing from hole to hole in 
the snow, and making but a single track. A dozen 
jumps and they struck another path and turned into 
it, running as before down the ridge. In the swift 
glimpses they gave me I noticed with satisfaction 
that, though thin and a bit ragged in appearance, they 
were by no means starved. The veteran leader had 
provided well for his little family. 

I followed their back track up the ridge for perhaps 
half a mile, when another track made me turn aside. 



Following the Deer 177 

Two days before, a single deer had been driven out of 
the yard at a point where three paths met. She had 
been running down the ridge when something in 
front met her and drove her headlong out of her 
course. The soft edges of the path were cut and 
torn by suspicious claw marks. 

I followed her flight anxiously, finding here and 
there, where the snow had been softest, dog tracks 
big and little. The deer was tired from long run- 
ning, apparently ; the deep holes in the snow, where 
she had broken through the crust, were not half 
the regular distance apart. A little way from the 
path I found her, cold and stiff, her throat horribly 
torn by the pack which had run her to death. Her 
hind feet were still doubled under her, just as she had 
landed from her last despairing jump, when the tired 
muscles could do no more, and she sank down without 
a struggle to let the dogs do their cruel work. 

I had barely read all this, and had not yet finished 
measuring the largest tracks to see if it were her old 
enemy that, as dogs frequently do, had gathered a 
pirate band about him and led them forth to the 
slaughter of the innocents, when a far-away cry came 
stealing down through the gray woods. Hark ! the 
eager yelp of curs and the leading hoot of a hound. 
I whipped out my knife to cut a club, and was off for 



178 Secrets of the Woods 

the sounds on a galloping run, which is the swiftest 
possible gait on snowshoes. 

There were no deer paths here ; for the hardwood 
browse, upon which deer depend for food, grew mostly 
on the other sides of the ridge. That the chase 
should turn this way, out of the yard's limits, showed 
the dogs' cunning, and that they were not new at 
their evil business. They had divided their forces 
again, as they had undoubtedly done when hunting 
the poor doe whose body I had just found. Part of 
the pack hunted down the ridge in full cry, while the 
rest lay in wait to spring at the flying game as it came 
on and drive it out of the paths into the deep snow, 
where it would speedily be at their mercy. At the 
thought I gripped the club hard, promising to stop 
that kind of hunting for good, if only I could get half 
a chance. 

Presently, above the scrape of my snowshoes, I heard 
the deer coming, cr-r-ruuch ! cr-r-runch ! the heavy 
plunges growing shorter and fainter, while behind the 
sounds an eager, whining trail-cry grew into a fierce 
howl of canine exultation. Something was telling me 
to hurry, hurry ; that the big buck I had so often 
hunted was in my power at last, and that, if I would 
square accounts, I must beat the dogs, though they 
were nearer to him now than I. The excitement of a 



Following the Deer 179 

new kind of hunt, a hunt to save, not to kill, was 
tingling all over me when I circled a dense thicket of 
firs with a rush, and there he lay, up to his shoulders 
in the snow before me. 

He had taken his last jump. The splendid strength 
which had carried him so far was spent now to the 
last ounce. He lay resting easily in the snow, his 
head outstretched on the crust before him, awaiting 
the tragedy that had followed him for years, by lake 
and clearing and winter yard, and that burst out 
behind him now with a cry to make one's nerves 
shudder. The glory of his antlers was gone ; he 
had dropped them months before ; but the mighty 
shoulders and sinewy neck and perfect head showed 
how well, how grandly he had deserved my hunting. 

He threw up his head as I burst out upon him from 
an utterly unexpected quarter — the very thing that I 
had so often tried to do, in vain, in the old glorious 
days. " Hast thou found me, O mine enemy ? Well, 
here am I." That is what his eyes, great, sad, accus- 
ing eyes, were saying as he laid his head down on the 
snow again, quiet as an Indian at the torture, too 
proud to struggle where nothing was to be gained 
but pity or derision. 

A strange, uncanny silence had settled over the 
woods, Wolves cease their cry in the last swift burst 



180 Secrets of the Woods 

of speed that will bring the game in sight. Then the 
dogs broke out of the cover behind him with a fiercer 
howl that was too much for even his nerves to stand. 
Nothing on earth could have met such a death 
unmoved. No ears, however trained, could hear that 
fierce cry for blood without turning to meet it face to 
face. With a mighty effort the buck whirled in the 
snow and gathered himself for the tragedy. 

Far ahead of the pack came a small, swift bulldog 
that, with no nose of his own for hunting, had fol- 
lowed the pirate leader for mere love of killing. As 
he jumped for the throat, the buck, with his last 
strength, reared on his hind legs, so as to get his fore 
feet clear of the snow, and plunged down again with 
a hard, swift sabre-cut of his right hoof. It caught 
the dog on the neck as he rose on the spring, and 
ripped him from ear to tail. Deer and dog came down 
together. Then the buck rose swiftly for his last blow, 
and the knife-edged hoofs shot down like lightning ; 
one straight, hard drive with the crushing force of a 
ten-ton hammer behind it — and his first enemy was 
out of the hunt forever. Before he had time to gather 
himself again the big yellow brindle, with the hound's 
blood showing in nose and ears, — Old Wally's dog, 
— leaped into sight. His whining trail-cry changed to 
a fierce growl as he sprang for the buck's nose. 





I 



I 




,,:' - -..■•■ ■■ : 



Following the Deer 181 

I had waited for just this moment in hiding, and 
jumped to meet it. The club came down between 
the two heads ; and there was no reserve this time in 
the muscles that swung it. It caught the brute fair 
on the head, where the nose begins to dome up into 
the skull, — and he too had harried his last deer. 

Two other curs had leaped aside with quick instinct 
the moment they saw me, and vanished into the 
thickets, as if conscious of their evil doing and anxious 
to avoid detection. But the third, a large collie, — a 
dog that, when he does go wrong, becomes the most 
cunning and vicious of brutes, — flew straight at my 
throat with a snarl like a gray wolf cheated of his kill- 
ing. I have faced bear and panther and bull moose 
when the red danger-light blazed into their eyes ; but 
never before or since have I seen such awful fury in a 
brute's face. It swept over me in an instant that it 
was his life or mine ; there was no question or alterna- 
tive. A lucky cut of the club disabled him, and I 
finished the job on the spot, for the good of the deer 
and the community. 

The big buck had not moved, nor tried to, after his 
last great effort. Now he only turned his head and 
lifted it wearily, as if to get away from the intolerable 
smell of his dog enemies that lay dying under his very 
nose. His great, sorrowful, questioning eyes were 



1 82 Secrets of the Woods 

turned on me continually, with a look that only inno- 
cence could possibly meet. No man on earth, I think, 
could have looked into them for a full moment and 
then raised his hand to slay. 

I approached very quietly, and dragged the dogs 
away from him, one by one. His eyes followed me 
always. His nostrils spread, his head came up with 
a start when I flung the first cur aside to leeward. 
But he made no motion ; only his eyes had a wonder- 
ful light in them when I dragged his last enemy, the 
one he had killed himself, from under his very head 
and threw it after the others. Then I sat down 
quietly in the snow, and we were face to face at 
last. 

He feared me — I could hardly expect otherwise, 
while a deer has memory — but he lay perfectly still, 
his head extended on the snow, his sides heaving. 
After a little while he made a few bounds forward, at 
right angles to the course he had been running, with 
marvelous instinct remembering the nearest point in 
the many paths out of which the pack had driven 
him. But he stopped and lay quiet at the first sound 
of my snowshoes behind him. " The chase law holds. 
You have caught me ; I am yours," — this is what his 
sad eyes were saying. And sitting down quietly near 
him again, I tried to reassure him, " You are safe, 



Following the Deer 183 

Take your own time. No dog shall harm you now." 
— That is what I tried to make him feel by the very 
power of my own feeling, never more strongly roused 
than now for any wild creature. 

I whistled a little tune softly, which always rouses 
the wood folk's curiosity ; but as he lay quiet, listening, 
his ears shot back and forth nervously at a score of 
sounds that I could not hear, as if above the music he 
caught faint echoes of the last fearful chase. Then 
I brought out my lunch and, nibbling a bit myself, 
pushed a slice of black bread over the crust towards 
him with a long stick. 

It was curious and intensely interesting to watch 
the struggle. At first he pulled away, as if I would 
poison him. Then a new rich odor began to steal up 
into his hungry nostrils. For weeks he had not fed 
full ; he had been running hard since daylight, and 
was faint and exhausted. And in all his life he had 
never smelled anything so good. He turned his head 
to question me with his eyes. Slowly his nose came 
down, searching for the bread. " If he would only 
eat ! — that is a truce which I would never break," I 
kept thinking over and over, and stopped eating in 
my eagerness to have him share with me the hunter's 
crust. His nose touched it; then through his hunger 
came the smell of the man — the danger smell that 



184 Secrets of the Woods 

had followed him day after day in the beautiful 
October woods, and over white winter trails when he 
fled for his life, and still the man followed. The 
remembrance was too much. He raised his head 
with an effort and bounded away. 

I followed slowly, keeping well out to one side of 
his trail, and sitting quietly within sight whenever he 
rested in the snow. Wild animals soon lose their fear 
in the presence of man if one avoids all excitement, 
even of interest, and is quiet in his motions. His fear 
was gone now, but the old wild freedom and the 
intense desire for life — a life which he had resigned 
when I appeared suddenly before him, and the pack 
broke out behind — were coming back with renewed 
force. His bounds grew longer, firmer, his stops less 
frequent, till he broke at last into a deer path and 
shook himself, as if to throw off all memory of the 
experience. 

From a thicket of fir a doe, that had been listening 
in hiding to the sounds of his coming and to the faint 
unknown click, which was the voice of my snowshoes, 
came out to meet him. Together they trotted down 
the path, turning often to look and listen, and vanished 
at last, like gray shadows, into the gray stillness of the 
March woods. 



GLOSSARY OF INDIAN NAMES 

Cheokhes, che-ok-hes' , the mink. 

Ch'geegee-lokh, ch? gee-gee' -lock, the chickadee. 

Cheplahgan, chep-ldh'-gan, the bald eagle. 

Chigwooltz, chig-wooltz' , the bullfrog. 

Cldte Scarpe, a legendary hero, like Hiawatha, of the Northern Indians. 

Pronounced variously, Clote Scarpe, Groscap, Gluscap, etc. 
Deedeeaskh, dee-dee' -ask, the blue jay. 
Hukweem, huk-weeni ', the great northern diver, or loon. 
Ismaques, iss-md-ques' ', the fish-hawk. 
Kagax, kdg'-dx, the weasel. 
Kakagos, kd-kd-gos', the raven. 
Keeokuskh, kee-o-kusk' ', the muskrat. 
Keeonekh, kee'-o-nek, the otter. 
Killooleet, kil'-loo-leet', the white-throated sparrow. 
Kookooskoos, koo-koo-skoos', the great horned owl. 
Koskomenos, kos'-kom-e-nos', the kingfisher. 
Kupkawis, cup-ka'-wis, the barred owl. 
Kwaseekho, kwd-seek'-ho, the sheldrake. 
Lhoks, locks, the panther. 
Malsun, mal'-sun, the wolf. 
Meeko, ?neek'-o, the red squirrel. 
Megaleep, 7neg'-d-leep, the caribou. 

Milicete, mil'-i-cete, the name of an Indian tribe; written also Malicete. 
Mitches, mit-ches, the birch partridge, or ruffed grouse. 
Moktaques, ?nok-ta'-ques, the hare. 
Mooween, moo-ween' ', the black bear. 
Musquash, mus' '-quash, the muskrat. 
Nemox, nem'-ox, the fisher. 
Pekquam, pek-wam', the fisher. 

Seksagadagee, sek'-sd-ga-dd'-gee, the Canada grouse, or spruce partridge. 
Skooktum, skook'-tum, the trout. 
Tookhees, tok'-hees, the wood mouse. 
Upweekis, tip-wee k'-iss, the Canada lynx. 



AUG 12 1901 



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